R. Nelson Parrish has worked in a lot of professions throughout his life.
He worked for the U.S. Senate. He did construction and worked on films and at an Internet marketing company for a bit.
“That was the most miserable job I ever had,” Parrish, now a mixed-media artist, said during a telephone call from his studio in Southern California. “I was in a little cubicle typing code and spamming people for 16 hours a day.”
After he made the company $1 million dollars, it fired him.
“My quota was $1.25 million and I was supposed to make a third of the revenue for the company,” Parrish said. “I didn’t quite make it and that’s when they let me go.”
The artist also tried his hand at teaching art on the university level, but he said it “was heartbreaking.”
“There would be kids who would work their tails off and do these fantastic works and then six months later, they would switch majors,” he said.
Five years ago, Parrish was ready to fly back to his childhood home in Alaska.
“My car blew up and I broke my hand,” he said. “My possessions had burned up in a fire that burned literally half of Santa Barbara and then we found my roommate’s dog had epilepsy.”
Before he got on the plane, he visited his brother in San Jose, Calif., and received a call from a gallery that was showing some of his works.
The owner said actor Rob Lowe had purchased half of Parrish’s works.
“I couldn’t have gotten much lower and then all of a sudden I was in Architectural Digest,” Parrish said with a laugh. “Now, it’s just me keeping my head down and working on my art.”
Parrish will celebrate his career in art with his first solo exhibit, at the Kimball Art Center, 638 Park Ave., beginning with an opening reception for KAC members on Saturday, June 2, at 6 p.m. The works, which will feature colorful resin-on-wood wall hangings, totems and videos, will be on display to the public in the main gallery until July 29.
“I can’t wait to come to Park City,” Parrish said. “I will take any excuse to go there. I love the Kimball, Park City and love everyone who works at the Kimball. I couldn’t be more excited than to have my first solo show there. It’s an honor, treat and privilege.”
Parrish got interested in resins through a roundabout way, he said.
“I started out as a photographer when I was 13 and I shot all through high school,” he explained. “I continued shooting when I was in college studying business.”
Parrish decided to take a photography class and the professor told him to take the next class up.
“Then I took the other photography classes, so on and so forth,” he said.
Parrish was also an avid skier, surfer and auto racer at that time, but he realized he would have to give up competing because of the stress it put on his body.
“When I stopped, I had all this energy and didn’t know where to put it,” he said. “Art kind of gave the same response that working out and competing did. So, I said, ‘Let’s go for it.'”
There was also a certain factor that Parrish didn’t enjoy about photography, although he still shoots on occasion.
“There was a constraining factor that people who see the photos would fixate on the image and not what the whole photo was trying to say,” he said. “I decided photography was an insufficient vehicle to express my ideas and concepts.”
Those concepts included color, especially the types of blurred colors that he would see when he was racing down a mountain, on the ocean or on a race course.
“I could talk to people about these kinds of colors and people would know what I was talking about,” he said.
While in graduate school, Parrish was introduced to art styles such as West Coast minimalism and other concepts that focused on color.
“The artists I admired were using materials and products that I knew through competing surfboards, skis and racecars,” he said. “I understood the stuff.”
Parrish’s time working in construction also helped him with fabricating, engineering and working with the materials.
“It seemed more natural to me than taking a paintbrush and splatting it across a canvas,” he said.
One of his first trademark pieces was a 10-foot guitar, modeled after a Gibson Les Paul, which was displayed on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.
“It was sold to charity and has made a lot of money,” Parrish said.
Ray Scherr, the former owner of Guitar Center, now owns the piece.
Although Parrish has made working with resin and wood a livelihood, he doesn’t enjoy the working on the art as much as he enjoys seeing the final product.
“Frankly, I hate the process,” he said with a laugh. “I’m using a bio resin, which is a fantastic material in terms that it is nontoxic and environmentally friendly.”
The drawbacks include the cost and consistency of the liquid.
“It’s 10times more expensive and as thick as water,” Parrish said. “So, it takes three days to cure, and if there is a pinhole in moldings, it will drip through, and it’s sticky and gooey.
“However, it also dries more clear and stronger than other resins,” he said. “While I’m not in love with resin and wood, my work is making color and what I see in line and form and shadow tangible while I was moving through the landscape.”
Parrish will display 18 wall works, four totems and a collection of video pieces.
“One of the wall works is the 100th piece I will have made in my career,” he said. “It is comprised of 100 10-inch-by-10-inch paintings. Each is a unique combination of color and stripes. All that I love about what I’m doing is in this piece and to show it in Park City makes it that much special.”
The Kimball Art Center, 638 Park Ave., will show the works of R. Nelson Parrish in the Main Gallery beginning with a reception for Kimball Art Center members on Saturday, June 2, from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. The exhibit will be open to the public through Sunday, July 29. For more information, visit www.kimballartcenter.org.