Jon Peterson (artist)

Jon Peterson
Jon and Tanarat Peterson, Venice, 2015
Born	Stillwater, MN
Nationality	American
Education	University of Minnesota;Otis Art Institute Engineering and Art
Known for	Participatory Art, Sculpture, Painting
Awards	National Endowment of the Arts
Website	www.jonpetersonart.com

Los Angeles-based artist Jon Peterson (born 1945, Stillwater, MN) earned a B.S. in aeronautical engineering in 1968 from the University of Minnesota before earning an MFA at Otis Art Institute in 1976. Following his move downtown in 1976, he participated in Los Angeles’ thriving downtown art scene, as captured by Steven Seemayer’s film Young Turks, the Movie -Interview with Jon Peterson, 1982 Peterson is best known for his bum (bad) shelters, which prompted critics to coin terms like art-at-large, participatory art, guerilla sculpture and guerilla architecture, as they were sited outdoors in the urban landscape, so as to attract hobos and homeless alike. In 1980, Peterson was awarded $10,000 from the National Endowment of the Arts. In 1983, Robert Mapplethorpe photographed body builder Lisa Lyon on the roof of his penthouse studio at the Continental Building.

Like that era’s “site constructions,” Peterson’s bum (bad) shelters blended architecture and landscape, further expanding sculpture into the realm of practical art, which Carrie Rickey recognized as dangerous territory in 1980.Peter Plagens noted, “Practicality—actually, survival—obviously trumped aesthetics in the demimonde of the downtown homeless. Almost immediately someone yanked the sculpture out of its hole, laid it flat on the ground, and slept in it.” Envisioning a future where artists remade our world, Constance Mallinson responded thus to his art in 1980: “In an over-populated, polluted, resource-depleted world, the visionary power of artists in environmental engineering, urban planning, industrial designing, sociology and behavioral psychology could help solve persistent social dilemmas.”

Soon after graduate school, he had solo exhibitions with Los Angeles gallery Newspace (1976, 1977, 1978, and 1979), Washington, DC gallery Protech-McIntosh (1980), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (1985), and his work was included in group shows at Laguna Art Museum (1976), San Diego Museum of Art (1980), Washington Project for the Arts (1981), Cal State Fullerton Gallery (1981) and Foundation for Art Resources (1982).