September 2012: Annamarie Peters

Annamarie Peters uses a surprising mix of found objects and paint to create her unique mixed media assemblages. Her work relies heavily on recycled and reclaimed material for backgrounds and details. With so much waste generated by today’s throwaway culture, she searches through other people’s unwanted objects, creating something entirely new and cohesively whole out of otherwise disparate elements. Finished pieces usually generate a very hand-worked personal quality, made evident by a heavy hand with sandpapered surfaces, multitudes of hand hammered nails, and lettering and dashed lines. An early love of SLR (“real”) cameras and photography lead to a fascination with studying old family photographs and noticing details recorded in them surrounding the figures. Her current work is an extension of that fascination with a “snapshot” of a person or time period. She adds collaged vintage details and painted sections of advertising and other images to a piece to tell a story about a person, a relationship, or a period of time. The challenge and fun for her are in connecting the details with a sense of visual wit. Some connections are obvious and less personal, others far-fetched, with the intent to leave connections open so that each viewer can create his or her own.