Today we’d like to introduce you to Peter Barnes.
Peter, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
After twenty years in an insurance cubicle, both my engines burned out and the landing gear did not deploy. I had to do something else. My urge to create grew insistent.
A documentary on folding included Paul Jackson making an elegant paper shape with just one fold. I plagiarized it into a five foot wide perforated steel lamp shell. Mr. Jackson was very encouraging after I confessed. I still love the simplicity of fewer folds, but ever since I saw Richard Sweeney’s work, knife pleats have been my drug of choice.
I’ve worked with metal, plastic, paper, and wood. Most of my wood art has been made from pianos I have taken apart. The keys are the least useful parts. I have more fun with the hammers, dampers, strings and other parts usually hidden from view.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I work primarily in paper using curved knife pleats. Knife pleats are simple: one crease up and the next one down. Alternate the spacing between the creases – wide, narrow, wide, narrow. It’s formal and useful until you curve the creases. Then it looks like mutated nature.
I started taming the shapes when I did the math on the standard pleated origami sphere. That insight helps me design shapes that grow around a space like nature or a dream or taffy pulled in outer space.
Between a flat sheet and a flowing form is magic that remains even after you see how it is done. My art feeds my different. If my art feeds something in you, consider owning it.
What do you think it takes to be successful as an artist?
Successful art reaches people and grabs them by the guts. It is a worthwhile message encrypted in clay, stone, marble, iron, bronze, steel, paint, pixels and whatever comes next. That is the doctrinal truth. We have to add the pragmatic truth that the artist needs to be paid. Successful art is the golden egg. We can fight over the limited eggs we have, but better to feed the geese that make more.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
My work can be seen by appointment, or online at petergoods.com or on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/113668872@N02/
I’ve also made a video showing the process from design to finished art at https://youtu.be/8Ip_L6xC9Gw
Contact Info:
- Address: 1412 Fern St
- Website: petergoods.com
- Phone: 8584427728
- Email: peter.d.barnes@gmail.com
- Instagram: peterspaper
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peterbarnessculptor/
- Other: https://www.flickr.com/photos/113668872@N02/
Image Credit:
Peter Barnes
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