Lauren Peterson teaches drawing and figure drawing.
lpeterson@valdosta.edu
www.laurenmichellepeterson.com
lpeterson@valdosta.edu
www.laurenmichellepeterson.com
Domestic Altar II (feet up, foot down, do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around), Acrylic, spray paint, and fabric on mattress cushion, pochoir on fabric and table runner, artificial tree, balloons, lamp stand, wood, fabric, caulk, thread, mixed media, 7 x 5 x 5 feet, 2019
Click on the thumbnail images below to see the whole artwork.
Click on the thumbnail images below to see the whole artwork.
Artist Statement
I collect devalued objects such as used furniture, discarded housewares, packaging, and textiles. I use these objects as painterly marks to intuitively build abstract compositions. Considering material properties and limitations, I negate the objects’ use-function in favor of its aesthetic capacities. My recent work focuses on expectation and disappointment. I consider absurdity in domestic maintenance and rituals that beautify and strive for an ideal. Subverting the spectacle of decoration I push the seductively beautiful towards overwhelmingly sickening. My interest lies at the tipping point like when one consumes too many skittles and feels ill despite the initially gratifying sugar surge. My sewn, stuffed, wrapped, and painted assemblages are mutations of familiar forms turned abject. These forms are components, able to be rearranged within an installation, stand alone, or be taken apart and repurposed in order to deny the idea of progress having an objective conclusion.
My primary motivation in the studio is play and often anchors in a capacity for humor. I find perfection laughable and instead allow my forms to succumb to gravity, mistakes of my own hand, and the inclinations of their materials. I use awkwardness, and exaggeration to point towards artificiality and consider the slippery demarcation between useful and useless, appealing and repellent. Challenging the normative hierarchy of value, I reject objects as symbols as a way for me to nullify gender and social expectations.
Bio
Lauren Peterson is an interdisciplinary artist who focuses on the potential ontological ramifications of a consumption-based society. She was named a 2019/20 Aspen Art Museum Fellow and 2017/18 Emerging Artist and Project Grant recipient from the City of Atlanta. Past exhibitions include Off the Wall at Spartanburg Art Museum (SC), Message from the Sea at the GAIA Center in Athens, Greece, and Forget Me Not at Zuckerman Museum (GA). Her work is part of the permanent collection of the High Museum of Art (GA) and Goya Contemporary (MD). She is currently a Lecturer of Foundations at Valdosta State University (GA).
I collect devalued objects such as used furniture, discarded housewares, packaging, and textiles. I use these objects as painterly marks to intuitively build abstract compositions. Considering material properties and limitations, I negate the objects’ use-function in favor of its aesthetic capacities. My recent work focuses on expectation and disappointment. I consider absurdity in domestic maintenance and rituals that beautify and strive for an ideal. Subverting the spectacle of decoration I push the seductively beautiful towards overwhelmingly sickening. My interest lies at the tipping point like when one consumes too many skittles and feels ill despite the initially gratifying sugar surge. My sewn, stuffed, wrapped, and painted assemblages are mutations of familiar forms turned abject. These forms are components, able to be rearranged within an installation, stand alone, or be taken apart and repurposed in order to deny the idea of progress having an objective conclusion.
My primary motivation in the studio is play and often anchors in a capacity for humor. I find perfection laughable and instead allow my forms to succumb to gravity, mistakes of my own hand, and the inclinations of their materials. I use awkwardness, and exaggeration to point towards artificiality and consider the slippery demarcation between useful and useless, appealing and repellent. Challenging the normative hierarchy of value, I reject objects as symbols as a way for me to nullify gender and social expectations.
Bio
Lauren Peterson is an interdisciplinary artist who focuses on the potential ontological ramifications of a consumption-based society. She was named a 2019/20 Aspen Art Museum Fellow and 2017/18 Emerging Artist and Project Grant recipient from the City of Atlanta. Past exhibitions include Off the Wall at Spartanburg Art Museum (SC), Message from the Sea at the GAIA Center in Athens, Greece, and Forget Me Not at Zuckerman Museum (GA). Her work is part of the permanent collection of the High Museum of Art (GA) and Goya Contemporary (MD). She is currently a Lecturer of Foundations at Valdosta State University (GA).