Peter Olson

Peter Olson is an artist living and working outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His work comes from a rich tradition of photographers, having studied at Pennsylvania College of the Arts (now University of the Arts), and from working in the medium his entire life—with international clients such as Citi,Hershy, Alcoa,Vanguard,Legg Mason. All of his architectural photography is in the Collection of The Antheneum of Philadelphia, donated long before his experiments with the three dimensional form.

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Stitched collages in his formative years will recall the kaleidoscopic layers of those dimensional applications of his images in more recent works. Portraits of “angry strangers”, as he calls his street photography, are spliced with religious iconography of Western art history. More than three-dimensional, the circular loops created by image repetition around cylindrical vessels echo not only the wheel- throwing process, but a deep attachment to the history of film photography. Muybridge’s contributions to our visual vocabulary are ever-present in these works.

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Peter Olson’s first solo exhibition at AMOCA in 2017 featured 70 pieces of his wheel-thrown ceramic pieces, his original photography sealed with oxidized ink onto the forms. Since New Ceramics magazine’s feature in 2016, the works have been exhibited in numerous exhibitions, and reside in the collections of museums and private collectors.