By Seth Sandronsky
William Peterson, who has lived in Sacramento since second grade, is a ceramic artist who likes to take landscape photos through aircraft windows. “A lot of my work is from an aerial perspective,” he says. “I love the formations and the geometry of nature and manmade structures.”
Peterson’s ceramic art blends clay and glaze, each of which has distinct properties that change when they interact. Call it the dialectics — of qualitative and quantitative change — of Peterson’s aerially-inspired artwork.
“What I love about clay is its unique properties,” he says. “The glaze I apply interacts with the clay, and when I add texture, there are endless possibilities for interpreting landscapes.”
By day, Peterson is an art director and graphic designer at VSP Vision Care. But it was a job layoff 10 years ago that spurred his ceramic art journey. “In taking a little break between jobs, I thought of how I used to do clay and loved it as a child,” he says. “I took a couple of classes and found that I still loved clay. I have never looked back.”
Maturity factors into Peterson’s artwork. He is focused, for instance, on fractures and repairs, socially and individually. That process of change resonates during the current moment of social and individual alienation and polarization in the country, according to Peterson.
There is an underlying story in the landscapes of Peterson’s ceramic artwork: “The journeys that we experience, learning a lesson that changes the direction of our life,” he says. “This landscape of our memory forms a map of where we have been and where we are headed.”
Peterson’s work is on exhibit at the clayARTstudio 814 in East Sacramento. “It’s a great community, with such a cross-pollination of ideas and techniques,” he says. “It’s uplifting to have such a group of artists who I can get inspiration from and also inspire.”
Further, his work is on display at the nearby Archival Gallery. “My latest works there are a new form for me,” Peterson says. “Instead of flat panels, the domes bring new life and dimension to both my aerials and ‘After the Fire’ works.”
That new chapter of Peterson’s artwork focuses on the permanency of personal memories and material losses the victims of the Southern California wildfires suffered in their collective adversity.
Peterson’s artwork will also appear at the silent art auction of this year’s Crocker Art Museum. He has no plans to stop there, though. Moving forward, Peterson aspires to wade into the waters of public art. Moreover, he wants to teach ceramic artwork to others.
Peterson recalls how he, as an adult learner, entered into the realm of creating unique visual expressions of changes via clay and glaze, mixing the interior and exterior landscapes of everyday life. “That is where positive growth happens,” he says.