Dan Peterman is an internationally known artist who is recognized for his work with ecologically themed

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often calle ...

. Additionally, he is employed as associate professor of art at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Work

Peterman's work is an example of

adaptive reuse Adaptive reuse refers to the process of reusing an existing building for a purpose other than which it was originally built or designed for. It is also known as recycling and conversion. Adaptive reuse is an effective strategy for optimizing the ...

though he was practicing it long before it had an official title. Peterman takes existing objects and manipulates them to show their original purpose while exposing the possibility for newness. His work explores the "intersection of art and ecology" and he "embraces a wide variety of formal and situational strategies, and employs a range of materials including recycled plastic and metals, as well as organic and post-consumer waste." Though Peterman usually exhibits his work in

museums A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

and at

art galleries An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lo ...

, he is known for displaying his art for the general public. The most known example is his ''running table,'' a 100-foot-long

picnic table A picnic table (or picnic bench) is a table with benches (often attached), designed for working with and for outdoor dining. The term is often specifically associated with rectangular tables having an A-frame structure. Such tables may be refe ...

located in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

Millennium Park Millennium Park is a public park located in the Loop community area of Chicago, operated by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. The park, opened in 2004 and intended to celebrate the third millennium, is a prominent civic center ne ...

. The table "considers issues around consumption and recycling" and is "made from the equivalent of two million recycled milk bottles." Another of Peterman's works, an 80' x 80' dance floor often used by the City of Chicago for summer events, is located just a few blocks away in Grant Park.

Reviews

Frieze Magazine ''frieze'' is a contemporary art magazine, published eight times a year from London. History ''frieze'' was founded in 1991 by Frieze Art Fair founders Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover with artist Tom Gidley. A Damien Hirst butterfly paintin ...

: "Situated within the contradictions that damn and glorify public space, Peterman’s work takes on a class-crossing potential, in addition to its material ironies, that it could not achieve in a more circumscribed art space." *Klosterfelde Gallery: "In using human waste for his sculpture work or installed environments he reveals the interrelated social, economic and political effects of our generation of waste." *

Museum of Contemporary Art Museum of Contemporary Art (often abbreviated to MCA, MoCA or MOCA) may refer to: Africa * Museum of Contemporary Art (Tangier), Morocco, officially le Galerie d'Art Contemporain Mohamed Drissi Asia East Asia * Museum of Contemporary Art Shangha ...

: "'Environmental' is the lazy way of describing Dan Peterman's work. While his art is about

resource recovery Resource recovery is using wastes as an input material to create valuable products as new outputs. The aim is to reduce the amount of waste generated, thereby reducing the need for landfill space, and optimising the values created from waste. Reso ...

-he incorporates recycled materials into his projects-it's also alchemical, sociological, and activist."http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P3-638791801.html

Notable exhibitions

* Liechtenstein Art Museum *

Smart Museum of Art The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art is an art museum located on the campus of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. The permanent collection has over 15,000 objects. Admission is free and open to the general public. The Smart Muse ...

Baltimore Museum of Art The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of ...

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contempora ...

* Gothenburg Museum of Art * Abteiberg Museum *

National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto The is an art museum in Kyoto, Japan. This Kyoto museum is also known by the English acronym MoMAK (Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto). History The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (MoMAK) was initially created as the Annex Museum of the Nationa ...

Notable awards

* Richard Driehaus Foundation award *

Lewis Comfort Tiffany Louis Comfort Tiffany (February 18, 1848 – January 17, 1933) was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art NouveauL ...

Foundation award *UIC University

Scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or research ...

Award

Education

*B.F.A.

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which rou ...

*M.F.A.

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Peterman, Dan Living people University of Chicago alumni American artists University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire alumni Year of birth missing (living people)