Abbey Peters lives in Iowa City, USA and works with ceramics and collected materials. She received an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Iowa (2024) and a BFA from the University of Arkansas (2019). Peters has exhibited nationally in over thirty group exhibitions, received international grants for midwifery and apiary research in London, UK, and worked at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO and Lillstreet Arts Center in Chicago, IL. She has been an artist in residence at laRex l’Atelier in St. Raphael, France, the inaugural CIRCA Exchange in Boulder, CO, and Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT. Peters is currently the 3D Studio Technician at Grinnell College.
My research resides in the inherited secrets buried within a home – whispers of stories, old wives’ tales passed down from previous generations to protect those forthcoming. Accompanied with inherited lore, I study practices like horticulture and midwifery and look at decorative arts, herb gardens, and apothecaries of early modern Europe.
Women have historically fulfilled underappreciated domestic roles – in doing so, we’ve learned to use the inherited skills to survive and protect one another. We share the unspoken rules and favors of the spaces we inhabit. We whisper warnings of danger around us – those that grow in grass or sleep next to us at night. We share seeds to make tea when clinics will no longer offer care. We swap recipes to calm symptoms when doctors don’t believe our pain. We walk each other home when night is too dark. The communal whispers, often dismissed as fruitless gossip or oldwives’ tales, offer a veil of care, a warning, a camouflage to hide in plain sight. I activate secrecy as a tool for survival by considering the physical act of burying, covering, and hiding a form of resistance.
I build interactive ceramic jars and furniture to conceal items commonly used by myself, and people back hundreds of years that may now or one day be illicit: contraceptives, abortifacient herbs, recipes, books. The floral patterns protect the sculptures by harnessing the usual dismissal of decoration and femininity throughout history. I offer my inherited secrets and stories for a future generation.