Peter Kreider

Workspace Program Resident 2002

The unusual happens pretty regularly, the impossible is slightly more rare. These categories are contingent on our knowledge of the world and our attention to our environment. My work addresses this relationship between wonder and understanding through a diverse range of media.
In sculpture, drawing, and photography, I explore the unrecognized and the under-recognized by suggesting a hidden content in the world. In both the method and content of my work, materials hold a privileged position. The considered selection and handling of material promotes both physical and metaphorical shifts that encourage an intimacy with the unexpected.
These objects and images confound our assumptions of the everyday by engaging the conflict between our perceived understanding of the world and an unacknowledged potential. —Peter Kreider, 2002

At Dieu Donné, Peter Kreider spent his 7 days in the studio with Studio Director Megan Moorhouse executing a series of cast paper "milk crates." The process involved casting pigmented cotton pulp to form the grid-like portions of the crate and then couching a translucent sheet of (sometimes pigmented) abaca on the back of the grid. The pieces were pressed, taken out of the mold, and air-dried, taking advantage of the fiber shrinkage and causing each side of the crate to puff out. The result is a series of pairs and trios of empty, stacked paper milk crates whose sides appear to swell as if brimming with their contents.

In addition to these works, Kreider also completed a series of two-dimensional pieces utilizing a water marked abaca fingerprint image, couched onto pigmented cotton substrates in various color combinations to illuminate the image. A few of these watermarks were also pulled in plain white cotton paper, referencing the tradition of watermarking the paper with the mill’s logo or mark to identify the maker.

About the Artist

Peter Kreider (b. Lancaster, PA) received a BFA from the NY State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1995 and a MFA in Scuplture from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 2004. Trained as an artist and raised as a third-generation craftsman, Kreider has created and built objects of all kinds, and currently works in industrial design and product development at a Prototype lab for team designers and engineers. Kreider has taught sculpture and fine arts at institutions such as Reed College, Oberlin, and the Pacific NW College of Art. He now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

For more information, please visit their website: http://peterkreider.com/