The term “elder statesman” may sound a bit ponderous, but how else to describe Theodore (“Ted”) Prescott’s stature and, well, indispensability? In the early 1980s, when Christian visual artists were slowly emerging from the wilderness of a defensive, disengaged attitude toward culture, Ted Prescott became a leader. His bold sculptures, employing neon, plaster, wood, and stone, brought ancient Christian iconography to arresting new life. He built the art department at Messiah College into a model of excellence (both in craft and thought) that would become a model for a goodly chunk of Christian higher education in America. His probing, articulate mind helped to create the vision that would animate a vital national organization, Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA). Add to all this something hard to measure, but nevertheless true: the reason for the quiet, but pervasive influence of this man is his Yankee integrity (and its corollary: independence of mind). So forgive us, Ted, for this fulsome praise. Grin and bear it.
Some of Prescott’s work is featured in Image issue 40.
Biography
Ted Prescott was born in Washington D.C. He received his MFA in Art from the Rinehart School of Sculpture, The Maryland Institute College of Art in 1970. He is a distinguished artist with pieces displayed in exhibitions and numerous journals. His most recent exhibition was at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania in 2004. Prescott has also had his pieces published in the work entitled “One Incarnate Truth” Christ’s Comeback in Art (pp. 119-123). He is currently a Professor of Art at Messiah College where in 2001 he received the Distinguished Professorship grant valid through 2006. Prescott also serves an important role with Image as he sits on the Editorial Advisory Board. Ted Prescott currently lives in Pennsylvania with his wife Catherine.
Current Projects
April 2005
Over the past twenty years I’ve been working on a series of crosses. My initial goal was to make useful symbols, but that changed as I began to understand that the cross really wasn’t much of a symbol for our culture. So I began to think of the crosses in light of the ideas and forms that moved me in art. Now my goal is to make crosses that are symbolically, aesthetically, and theologically charged. While my cross production has slowed in the last several years, it has not stopped. I’ve begun gathering information about working with radioactive materials, and hope to make a “safe” radioactive cross.
That potential cross is one example of a larger interest in substance and materiality. About fifteen years ago I used stone in a public commission, and the man who taught me about stone warned me that it was “seductive”. I’ve gradually used it more and more, and after spending time in a carving studio in Italy in the spring of 2003, I’ve been using a lot of marble, attending to its capacity to be either opaque as translucent, and enjoying its long history as a material of public address (it was to Romans what television is to Americans).
I am currently working on proposals for a private sculpture garden, and preparing for an exhibition at Valparaiso University in Indiana. My wife Catherine will exhibit with me. The exhibit is slated to open in late August.
 Descent from the Cross. Cast hydrocal, steel, wood, fiberglass, neon, cloth figure life size, cross 10′, 1985-1986. |
 Small Shelter (Wing). Danby marble, laminated acrylic. 16″ h, 7.375″ w, 6.75″ d. 2013.
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 Straight Line to Heaven. Applewood, polyurethane truckbed liner (20′ x 16″ x 16″). 2008. |
 The Annunciation. Cast hydrocal, neon, wood, found objects, figure life size, area 4′ x 12′. 1978-79. |
 The Way of the Cross II. Commercially fabricated sign on aluminum, with various caliber shots (each side 26″). Private collection. 2011. |
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