Expanded Drawing MAEP Gallery, Minneapolis Institute of Art
Expanded Drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art
...But it is Peterson whose work really sizzles. As intricate as lace and conceptually more complex, her designs are stunning inventions in a virtually forgotten medium associated with folk craft and Victorian spinsters. Up to 9 feet tall and 6 feet wide, they are astonishingly complex scenes, one a vast oval landscape of people, animals, buildings and vehicles woven into a thicket of Spanish moss. Another features a cow in an intricate pasture of flowers, cornstalks, barnyards and a vast spider web. The most fabulous is the witty "Underground Plot of the Royal Pommes Frites," which depicts an 18th-century garden in which Indians and American Revolution-era soldiers skirmish amid potato plants under the watchful eye of scarecrow versions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. It's an eye-teasing technical marvel and plenty of fun.
__Mary Abbe, Star Tribune
