Deb Peterson

Snow Days Exhibition

Deb Peterson’s February 12th Documentation

“When all is said and done, the weather & love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.” — Alice Hoffman “Here on Earth”

Within the cold, dreary and grey heart of February drums the vibrant and garishly coloured promise of the return of spring, warmth, sunshine, and above all, love.

Bio

Raised in the motor city of Canada, Windsor Ontario, I left home at 18 for Toronto to see what more the world had to offer. After some shop jobs I finally went to York University to study History – which I did until I realized that my heart belonged to visual arts. After working very hard I was accepted in the Fine Arts program and finished with my honours degree. After university I went to a small art college, the Dundas Valley School of Art for a mini graduate program where I also taught first year photography and sculpture.

Disillusioned with art as a career after university I worked random bar jobs until I got a job at Penguin where I realized that if I was going to work to keep a roof over my head then I’d have to do something creative or lose my mind. So I taught myself graphics programs after hours until I was good enough to be hired in as a designer. From there is my history as a designer where I’ve worked in dot coms corporate, and most recently as the Creative Director at the notorious publisher Harlequin. In amongst my road to design were backpacking through Europe, living abroad, working for Les Mis, having children and even being on a reality TV show for Harlequin to name a few odd things. Currently I consider myself a recovering graphic designer trying to understand if there can be a bridge between fine art and commercial art in work instead of only a wall.

Motivation

I find this project intriguing because weather is something that we all experience the same at the same moment (providing we are all living in the same area…) unavoidably unless we are hermited away somewhere. And yet this same surrounding experience can produce profoundly different reactions in different people depending on their baggage. Whereas one person might get excited and charged to see a snowfall because it means skiing, it can bring about depression in another because it means a venture out could result in a broken hip, the hospital and possibly death. While that is dire, it is meant to illustrate extremes to the same condition put on two different people and by extension the society we live in. What is the prevailing attitude of Canadians to weather? It seems to have a large impact us and we seem to be identified as a nation by the world largely by our famous cold, and um, Brian Adams.

Beyond this the discussions of weather are saviours in awkward situations as it becomes the unifying circumstance that we all think about, have opinions about and can seemingly allow us to have a reasonable discussion with someone we have nothing in common with. It is this unifier that interests me and the background baggage that is behind it, but still somehow all these layers create a societal consensus.

Design or art is about communicating experience to others in a meaningful way – hopefully producing a reaction. Since I can’t say where a day devoted to thinking on this would lead my solution to, it’s hard for me to say what exactly it will inform. But I can say that I believe in communication and storytelling to engage and excite people. I have a hard time with hard borders between artistic disciplines and expression. Design and art are both problem solving disciplines and the solution for me lies somewhere in there where it make sense. Communicating can be video, a painting, a sculpture or a piece that needs involvement – whatever is the best solution to the problem.