WREN PRATHER-STROUD may share her name with a bird for a reason: She was destined to fly and explore. The Carlsbad artist has visited Jerusalem as a 19-year-old exchange student, ridden a camel to view the pyramids in Egypt, watched bullfights in Spain, and viewed Michelangelo’s Pietà sculpture at the Vatican. “It changes your perspective on how you see everything else, because you’ve seen the most grandiose things,” she says. “If you start at the top, you have a reference point for everything.” The daughter and granddaughter of artists, Prather-Stroud got her start as a dancer at age four and eventually used her talents to earn the title of Miss New Mexico 1972. She began sculpting after college, and her first public piece, The Reader, can be found at the Carlsbad Public Library. Her latest works include busts of five prominent Carlsbad figures—Charles Bishop Eddy, Joseph Sampson Stevens, Jennie Lathrop Pratt, Olive Elizabeth Clark Tracy, and Flora Stokes Ryan—displayed at Halagueno Arts Park.
Whatever I see, I can figure out a way to make.
When I make a portrait of somebody or I do a sculpture of someone, I love the whole thing into existence. I learn everything I can about that person, and it goes into the sculpture.
It’s really a sweet thing.
Most of my people look really happy. They make me happy, so I make them happy.
People ask me how long it takes to do a sculpture. The pat answer for artists is “my whole life.” Actually, it’s kind of true.
My degree is in 18th-century literature. I put my kids through college because I write.
One of the things you’ll find about most artists, they are not risk averse. They are courageous people, they’re curious, they want to know, they don’t mind taking a risk to know something.
You have to have intellectual curiosity, and it can’t all come from a book.
In my experience, the best and quickest way to learn is to travel, because it’s immersion. There’s no choice, you’re going to figure it out.
Nobody needs a sculptor. We have the technology now. You can 3D print anything. You can scan a person, [but] it will be the most lifeless, dead thing you ever saw.
I have an image of what the object is going to be before I ever start.
One of the comments I get on my work is, “Oh my, it seems like they’re right there with you. They seem like they’re looking at you.” And I’m like, “Well, they are!”
I’ve never needed a website. People just call me. I’d like to do it just to put the whole body of work together so it’s all in one place.
I’m a lucky traveler. Magical good things happen when I travel. People always want to go with me because they know it’s going to be a good trip.
Egypt. If you want to be wowed by monumental sculpture, that’s where you go.
I always have a current passport.
If somebody says to me, “Hey, Wren, do you want to go?” I always say yes!
SEE FOR YOURSELF
See Wren Prather-Stroud’s sculptures at Halagueno Arts Park at 114 S. Halagueno St. in Carlsbad.