'Will and Grace' features Pittsburgh artist's colorful paintings

Western Pennsylvania fans of NBC’s “Will and Grace” should watch the April 16 episode with particular care.

Not only will it be the penultimate episode of the long-running sitcom, which ends its second run on April 23, but it also will feature prints of paintings by Pittsburgh artist Johno Prascak.

This will be the third time for Prascak’s work to appear on the “Will and Grace” set.

“I can’t wait — it’s going to be pretty awesome,” the artist said recently from his studio in the South Side Slopes.

He said he won’t know which scenes his work will be in until he sees the episode himself. Viewers should keep an eye out for the bold colors of his “Orange and Yellow Sun,” “Blue Morpho Butterfly” and “Sunflower.”

Prascak’s “Hollyhocks” print was used in a hospital scene in a May 2006 episode, while two of his “Heart” prints adorned a wall in a March 2018 baby shower episode.

Prascak, who was born in Munhall and grew up in Dormont, puts a little bit of Pittsburgh into every one of his paintings — literally.

He mixes sand sifted from the Monongahela River into enamel paint to get his work’s signature texture. As far as subject matter goes, “My work is half Pittsburgh and half all over the charts,” he said.

Blessed three times

He started getting wide recognition after the late Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney commissioned a painting of Heinz Field in 2001.

People around the country also were finding it via his Etsy shop, he said.

“So (my work) goes around the country and ended up in some Hollywood office,” he said. “Then ‘Will and Grace’ reached out to me. They said, ‘We love your work, but we don’t want a Pittsburgh scene. What else have you got?’”

For the April 16 episode, Prascak said he sent about 80 images of work he had on hand to the show producers.

“They just happened to like those three,” he said. “To have my work used once was really nice, but three times is great. I’ve been blessed three times.”

His work has been seen at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh Home and Garden Show, Fallingwater Museum Store, many other galleries and museums and on boxes of Sarris candies.

It even drew the attention of the late President George H.W. Bush, leading to a commission for a portrait to hang in Bush’s presidential library at Texas A&M University.

Cure for boredom

A self-taught artist, Prascak started painting as a cure for boredom while suffering from life-threatening ulcerative colitis from age 13 to 23, finally recovering after life-saving surgery.

While bartending at Mario’s South Side Saloon, Prascak said he would visit the library to study images of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso paintings.

“I picked up my dad’s Rustoleum and started copying them,” he said, eventually developing his own style of blending paint with sand.

Prascak originally planned to have a watch party for the upcoming “Will and Grace” episode that also would raise funds for Special Olympics Pennsylvania, but coronavirus stay-at-home mandates put an end to that.

Reproductions of the works featured in the show will be available for purchase afterward on his website. Prints of works from the earlier episodes also are available, along with many other Pittsburgh-themed and other pieces.

Details: 412-481-4208 or johnosart.com