Dan Peterman

Dan Peterman uses art as a way to engage with ideas of sustainability and environmental activism, often using discarded or recycled items to create site-specific installations and force the viewer to consider waste and sustainability. He frequently returns to the theme of stockpiles, for one project filling a library with one ton of post-consumer plastic as a stand-in for books, for another using plastic bones to fill a gallery floor, randomly dispersing them on the floor to settle like grains of sand. In such works, close examination reveals the randomness by which this material was collected, granulated, melted, extruded, and machined into new composite forms. For Running Table (1997), Peterman engaged the community by opening a communal 100-foot picnic table for the people of Chicago.