unknown
Art fall 15
by Michele Malinchak
Henry David Thoreau once said, “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” As a photographer, museum curator, musician, composer, arts administrator, teacher, writer and critic, Brian Peterson has spent a lifetime keeping busy. Throughout his multifaceted career of more than three decades, success has met him on many levels. A fearless explorer of the arts, he said, “I became an artist because I thought it was the only way to find the truth about myself.”
Photography is his main passion and since 1980 he’s had more than 30 solo exhibitions of his work. His photographs are in the permanent collections of several museums nationwide, including the Library of Congress and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Ranging from nature studies and portraits to more recent experiments in abstraction, his photos are charged with light and movement. “I love light, am instinctively drawn to it,” Brian said, “and it just keeps showing up in my work, unasked for, but always welcome, and always approached with reverence and praise.”
His use of light has been described by critics like Edward J. Sozanski of The Philadelphia Inquirer: “Peterson is as much a poet as he is a scientific observer... He displays mastery of using light not only to define natural forms but to make them shimmer with the music of creation...When he shows you a tiny twig glowing as if charged with a heavenly aura, you can almost see the aura yourself."
Ellen Rosenholtz, former director of the Lancaster Museum of Art said, “Peterson uses the camera to capture movement, contrasts of light and dark, and the visible that is often taken for granted … his photographs transcend the realm of objects to speak about matters of the soul.”
His love of nature was instilled at an early age out west where he grew up. He was born in Wyoming in 1953, but just weeks after his birth the family moved to Missoula, Montana. As a petroleum geologist for Shell Oil Company his father travelled state to state and also taught geology at the University of New Mexico. His logical mind was rooted in science, but he was also a dreamer who loved nature. Brian would often accompany his father on fishing and camping trips as a boy and later as an adult. On one of their many outings, a maple seed floated down from a tree and his father picked it up. Examining it in his hand, he asked his son, ”Do you think you could have designed something like this?” Brian answered something like “sure,” but the event etched upon him the simple beauty of nature.
Long before he emerged as a photographer, Brian’s first love was music. At age 14 he took private music lessons on the piano and viola and later studied music at the University of Montana in Missoula. His music teacher also happened to be a serious photographer on the side and had a darkroom in his basement. It sparked an interest in Brian and he took a couple of photography courses at the university. He shot a great deal of photos while going to school and also supported himself by working as a janitor, salesman and construction worker.
In 1974 he transferred from Montana to the University of Pennsylvania to continue his music studies. He attended for two years and then dropped out for several years. “I was a solitary dreamer with a lot of dues to pay,” he said. “But it was in that fallow period that I found my voice.”
He took a job in the darkroom at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1976-77. After quitting there, he worked in the camera department of Wanamaker’s where he sold several Instamatics. Then, in 1978 he worked for a photographer who did much of the high-quality object photography for museum publications in Philly. “He had a huge stack of large format negatives in his basement and needed six prints each. I worked down there for many years, more or less put myself through grad school doing that.”
In 1980 he re-enrolled at Penn and completed his bachelor of arts in music in 1981. For a long time Brian believed he could pursue music and photography, but realized he had to make a choice. He began to pick up cameras in earnest and decided to get serious formal training in photography. Enrolling in the graduate program at the University of Delaware, he studied under John Weiss, which proved to be a life changing experience. Brian jokingly recalled how he was called a “roots and rocks man” because of all the black and white nature studies he did.
During this time he produced his first serious body of work, “Trees, Stones, Water, and Light” (1979-1984) of which he said, “I still feel holds up after 35 years.”
While a student at Delaware, Brian organized a juried show of Philadelphia photographers called “Philadelphia Photographers ’84.” There he met long time friend and fellow photographer, Bruce Katsiff who was accepted to the show. Bruce would later play a pivotal role in Brian’s curatorial career at the James A. Michener Art Museum.
As a grad student Brian began teaching as an adjunct at the University of Delaware in 1983. He also taught photography for more than 12 years at University of the Arts, Tyler School of Art, Swarthmore College and Bucks County Community College. “At one point I had a morning class in Newark, Delaware and an evening class in Newtown. I put a lot of miles on my little Mazda,” he said.
Brian earned his master of fine arts in photography in 1985 and at this time also started and ran a small gallery inside a bookshop on South Street, Philadelphia called the Book Trader. It was the collaboration of Brian and Peter Hiler, who owned the shop. “We got to talking about what a desert Philly was regarding photo galleries and how hard it was for a young artist to grow. The light bulb went off and he said he had some wall space on the second floor. I did everything—chose artists, wrote press releases, held receptions, hung paintings. I burned out after two years and moved on to other stuff, but in some ways that was the most idealistic curating I ever did.”
From 1988 to 1990 he was founder and project director of the Photography Sesquicentennial Project in Philadelphia, which celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of photography.
While he was teaching at the University of Delaware, Brian learned that Bruce Katsiff had become CEO/director at a new museum in Doylestown called the James A. Michener Art Museum. He was looking for a grant writer and Brian’s previous experience helped him land the job. “I prepared to be an academic but ended up an arts administrator,” he said. He enjoyed the work but needed more hours and told Bruce, “If you give me four days a week at the museum, I’ll stop teaching.” His wish was granted and he stopped teaching in 1995.
For 24 years Brian was the Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest chief curator at the Michener. He played a huge role in its expansion—organized special exhibitions, wrote catalogs for the shows and helped acquire art for the collection. His groundbreaking work as a curator was described in the Journal of the Curators Committee of the American Alliance of Museums (CURCOM) as "a remarkable record of curatorial achievement." Brian was also a member of the Museums Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts in 2003, and has served on the Visual Arts Advisory Panel of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
He served as board member of CURCOM and in 2009 was part of a team that rewrote the code of ethics for curators. He also founded and organized an ongoing national competition promoting excellence in exhibition writing in 2002.
Throughout his job as curator he managed to set aside one day a week devoted to his art. “I’ve led a double life,” he said, “working as an arts administrator and curator by day and pursuing my photography and writing at night.”
Brian retired from the Michener in December of 2013. On June 9, 2014, the museum formally dedicated its Library and Research Center in honor of his achievements and creativity. The museum will be the permanent home for Brian’s personal and professional archives. In 2018 it will also be mounting a retrospective exhibition celebrating his 50th year as an artist and photographer.
Another highlight in 2014 was a solo exhibit at the Berman Art Museum at Ursinus College that integrated Brian’s photography and writing. The show was inspired by the novel Howards End by English author E.M. Forster who wrote about the need for connection in our lives. “Only connect,” he said, “live in fragments no longer.” Brian views art as a conversation and encouraged feedback from viewers at the show. He takes great stock in a quote from photographer Minor White who said, “The most valuable part of my photographs is what they bring me about the people who respond to them.” To that end, Brian wrote on the exhibit panel, “If I’m around, feel free to strike up a conversation. I’m the guy with the beard who looks like Santa Claus.”
A critically acclaimed writer, Brian was editor and principal author of the book, Pennsylvania Impressionism (2002) about artists of the New Hope art colony during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
His critical writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, American Arts Quarterly, American Art Review, The Photo Review, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. In addition, he received two Fellowships for Visual Arts Criticism from the PA Council on the Arts.
Brian has published two memoirs, The Smile at the Heart of Things (2009) and The Blossoming of the World (2011). In the books he reflects on creativity, faith and the human spirit. Smile was written in response to his 2007 diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease. Of his illness he said, “It never lets you forget that we live in the moment.”
His creative path has not been without struggle, but now in his 60’s it has brought him to a place of genuine gratitude. Brian has been married 22 years to artist Helen Mirkil, who is a painter, sculptor and poet. The couple enjoy spending time at their beach house in North Carolina where Brian’s “Sea of Light” series of photographs were taken. They include several sunrises and sunsets even though many in his profession have a bias against them, thinking they’re hokey. “I talked myself through it and decided to do it anyway,” he said.
`Exercise is now part of his daily routine as well as writing (he’s working on a third book), editing and printing from his archive of photos. He gets bored and likes to vary the scope of his current work by abstracting with Photoshop. While he thinks today’s photographers have no discipline or grounding in the old system of doing things, he’s never looked back since the advent of digital photography. “Film photography has no more mystery for me,” he said.
Early in his career he thought photographs at that time were “devoid of life, lacking heart and depth—too cognitive, empty.” All his professional life he’s tried to change that. In an essay he wrote on 20th century photographer Frederick Evans, Brian could very well have been writing about himself. “Evans’ work is a gentle reminder that there is more to life than the practical and the mundane, that beauty and wonder are real, and that it’s good to be excited about such things and to follow them wherever they happen to lead us.”
Brian is represented by Santa Bannon/ Fine Art Gallery in Bethlehem, PA. He and Helen Mirkil will be featured there in an exhibition called “Soaring” from June 5 through August 2. You can see more of Brian’s photographs on his website: brianhpetersonwordimage.com.
