Mikal Floyd-Pruitt [An article by Evelyn Patricia Terry]
/Mikal Floyd-Pruitt, chosen as one of five recipients of the prestigious Mary Nohl Fellowship in January 2023, receives additional funding toward production and career development. Administered by the Lynden Sculpture Garden, The Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund and Joy Engine provided funding for the Nohl Fellowship Awards.
Mikal Floyd-Pruitt, chosen as one of five recipients of the prestigious Mary Noh Fellowship in January 2023, models a cape he designed. Photo credit: Charlotte Floyd-Pruitt
Winning in the top category of “established artist,” Floyd-Pruitt’s multi - faceted practice includes interactive events and installations, painting, sculpture, clothing design, assemblages, rapping, music, and filmmaking. Floyd-Pruitt co-directs HomeWorks: Bronzeville, a development initiative, based in Milwaukee, focusing on local creative entrepreneurial talent by way of property ownership. He also created I Am Milwaukee, a lifestyle brand promoting unity and creativity.
Partnering with many community sectors, Floyd-Pruitt contributes uniquely to the Milwaukee art scene. Alexander Mitchell Integrated Arts School teacher, Nora Justin, engaged him to work with her class of thirty Latinx 7th-grade students. After asking them to write essays on the meaning of freedom, she wanted her students to share their thoughts with the world. Interested in the power of word play, Floyd-Pruitt recorded the students reading sentences from their essays, reinforcing that their words are powerful and meaningful. The project expanded to include Floyd–Pruitt’s thoughts on freedom as a rap collaboration with the students’ words. He then invited further collaborations with musicians Klassik and Sista Strings to transform the recordings into a fully produced song. Together student and professional artists produced a vibrant video, El Color de la Libertad, co–directed by Floyd–Pruitt and filmed by Wes Tank. It premiered at the Milwaukee Film Festival.
Then there is Splash! Free and open to the public, this energetic community engagement project invites neighbors and other participants to work side-by-side with Floyd-Pruitt and invited artists to create public art. In 2022, driving south on Vel R. Phillips Avenue (former 4th Street), I happened to witness the award-winning artist and diverse participants enthusiastically hurling paint-filled balloons at a two-story boarded-up HomeWorks: Bronzeville property scheduled for demolition. Located on the corner, the unchoreographed performance irreverently covered two sides with erratically splattered colors, soon transforming it into a Floyd–Pruitt “Splash!” public art production. Although exterior house paint, injected into balloons, appears totally random and spontaneous, methodical research enhances the process.
Diverse participants enthusiastically hurl paint-filled balloons at a boarded-up property scheduled for demolition for Floyd–Pruitt “Splash!” Photo Credit: Wes Tank
Incredibly creative, Mikal Floyd-Pruitt’s amiable humor and intelligence coupled with a pleasant demeanor reminds me of his family members that I have interacted with. My association with the Floyd-Pruitt family resulted from an art presentation I made to a MacDowell Montessori class. Mikal’s older brother, now professional artist Anwar Floyd–Pruitt, and my daughter, now documentary filmmaker Talleah Bridges McMahon, shared a kindergarten class. Following my art presentation, I learned that Anwar convinced his parents, Dr. Eugene Pruitt and Charlotte Floyd-Pruitt, to purchase one of my watermelon pastels—specifying that they choose a large size.
Fast forward, years later, both Floyd-Pruitt brothers graduated from Harvard University, following in the footsteps of their father. Mikal, in 2006, graduated cum laude, earning a B.A. in Visual Art and Environmental Studies with a filmmaking focus. Both eventually returned to Milwaukee. The Terry McCormick Contemporary Fine and Folk Art Gallery, my home gallery space, hosted an exhibition of their artwork with artist Kevin Boatright. Despite our generation gap, I was privileged to watch Mikal perform before the pandemic at Center Street Days and in Jazale’s Art Studio owned by brothers Vedale and Darren Hill. I even experienced my first Splash! painting on the Artery, now renamed the Beerline Trail.
Diverse participants enthusiastically hurl paint-filled balloons at a boarded-up property scheduled for demolition for Floyd–Pruitt “Splash!” Photo Credit: Wes Tank
Mikal, most significantly during the pandemic’s height, chose mostly to stay inside. Ideas germinated in his mind. Just as before the pandemic, he now ceaselessly produces distinctly dissimilar bodies of artwork throughout the city while also exhibiting and performing nationally. This $35,000 Mary Nohl Award, plus a $5,000 career development award, continues his bold and captivating movement forward after a brief hiatus. Fueled to flourish, look for the opening of his exhibition along with the other 2023 Mary Nohl Awardees in June 2024 at Marquette University’s Haggerty Museum of Art.
Evelyn Patricia Terry | Guest Writer for /CW
Contact: terryevelyn@hotmail.com
Check out this upcoming SPLASH! event by Mikal
