About
Abbey Peters is currently based in Denver, CO and serves as the Phipps Visiting Professor of Ceramics at the University of Denver. She holds an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Iowa and a BFA from the University of Arkansas. Her work has been exhibited across the US and Canada in over forty group exhibitions, in addition to recent solo shows at Berea College, and UIHC Project Art.
Peters has received international research grants supporting projects on reproductive care, seed preservation, and beekeeping in London, UK. She has held technician and teaching roles at Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village, CO), Lillstreet Art Center (Chicago, IL) and Grinnell College (Grinnell, IA). Peters has been awarded residencies at laRex l’Atelier (St. Raphael, France), the inaugural CIRCA Exchange (Boulder, CO), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), and the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts (Helena, MT).
My research explores inherited secrets within the home – whispers, warnings, and old wives’ tales passed down to protect future generations. I reference domestic interiors, decorative arts, and gardens to explore ideas of matrilineal knowledge and secret-keeping as a tool for survival.
Women have long carried underappreciated domestic roles, sharing unspoken rules to survive and protect one another. 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 the night is too dark. The whispers, often dismissed as fruitless gossip, offer a veil of care, a camouflage to hide in plain sight.
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.