Peter Olson: Marked for Life

About

Peter Olson began his photography career in the 1970s when he founded the punk rock magazine, New Sound. Subsequently, he became a street photographer, architectural photographer, sports photographer and even corporate head shot photographer.  Around 2013, he developed a passion for ceramics and looked for ways to combine his two interests.  Recognizing that simply adding photos to the surface of ceramics was rather commonplace, he invented a form of ceramic narratives in the tradition of ancient Greek vessels that told mythological stories around the circumference of their forms.  However, Olson’s figures are not gods and goddesses, but often average people on the street.  He transfers ink from his photographic images onto his own, highly accomplished, wheel-thrown pots.  In fact, all the images on Olson’s pots come through his camera, even the filigree and architectural elements that he photographed at the V&A and British Museum.  He then meticulously hand colors everything, achieving the appearance of fine Sévres porcelain.  The exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery will include work from his Marked for Life series, which depicts people whose bodies are covered with tattoos, a parallel to Olson’s own practice of decorating the bodies of his ceramic forms.