Art by Roger Peet
I'm an artist and a printmaker. My work tends to focus on the contemporary crisis of biodiversity and what can and can't be done about it. I'm a member of the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative (justseeds.org), a group of North American artists producing socially and environmentally engaged artwork. Click on the thumbnails at right for larger images and more information.
A new small print with a message of encouragement for both the getting and the getting away. Two rubylith films, printed at ye olde Flight 64 in Portland.
A diptych based on experiences I had in Congo, among the strongest people and the most beautiful creatures. These are attempts to shoehorn 200 years of history and 15 years of obsession into rectangular printed objects. The visual motifs are based on colonial era Congolese banknotes, and the people are a few of those that I met. Click here and here for further information on the respective pieces.
Here’s a slogan that resonates fuzzily from the bygone days of industrial unionism, repurposed for a broader context. “Labor creates all wealth, therefore all wealth must go to labor” is something usually attributed to Marx, or more properly perhaps to Engels, his co-pamphleteer. It’s difficult to find the exact quote, leading one to imagine an apocryphal quality to it. At any rate, if you take it literally, it leads your gaze away from the industrial machine, cranking out gewgaws and technics and lifestyles, and towards the labor on which this whole enterprise rests: the labor of insects. Without the daily hum and thrum of the pollinators (not to mention the decomposers, the pulpers, and the predators), there would be nothing for us to squabble over, no cotton for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, no indigo for the police uniforms, no hickory staves for the unions to block the truncheon blows with, no sweet nectar of any sort anywhere at all. And as the bees disappear from us, along with the rest of nature, we will eventually awaken from our drunken raging stupor to find ourselves perched atop a ladder, unbalanced, out alone in the tall grass with nowhere to rest against and nothing holding us up. The only choice remaining to us will be which way to fall.
This was made during the Justseeds installation “Uprisings”, at the Union Gallery in Miwaukee, March of 2013. It is entirely handmade, films cut from rubylith and inked on cotton vellum, printed cooperatively on recycled Mr. French paper.
3-color silkscreen print
26” x 40”
Signed, numbered edition
Check out a ton of photos from Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative’s recent install in Milwaukee during Southern Graphics 2013. The image here is one of my two contributions- illustrating how flocks stay together by staying the right distance away from each other.
Listen to an interview with me conducted by Erin Yanke of PDX’s KBOO community radio; talking about Congo, conservation, art, and obstacles. You can also read a much more in-depth interview with me from the international conservation-news site Mongabay here.
Click on the image for a larger version.
When I was in Congo in 2012, I got used to monkeys. They were regular visitors to the camp, leaping and loping through the trees outside the palisade to feed in the oil palms by the river. I was there during the wet season, and almost all of the females had young clinging fiercely to their chests. In the forest, at least six different species patrolled different levels of the canopy, searching out the same fruits, warning each other of predators in an amazing example of inter-specific cooperation. The monkeys in this image are Red-Tailed Monkeys, (Ascanius sp.) members of a diverse genus that happens to make ridiculously cute noises while swinging madly through the dense foliage. Make sure to look up before you leap!
This is an entirely handmade 5-color screenprint, no computers involved- ink on vellum and rubylith were used to make the films. Printed at Flight 64 studio in Portland.
Available here.
I was recently commissioned by the Center for Biological Diversity (http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/) to design a banner for their new Portland office. They gave me a list of endangered animals that they’ve worked to have listed federally as endangered, and I made them into this image. From left to right: Green Sturgeon, Fender’s Blue Butterfly, Marbled Murrelet, Orca, Wolf, Siskiyou Mountain Salamander, Spotted Owl, Taylor’s Checkerspot Butterfly, Streaked Horned Lark, Caribou, and Fisher.
Click on the Image for a larger version.
This is a two-color screenprint on a lovely apple-green acid-free Mr. French paper. As always, this was produced using exclusively analog methods- the images are hand-cut from rubylith film. Printed at Flight 64 studio in Portland, Oregon.
Here are four blockprints that I made while in Congo, based on some of the social and ecological experiences I had there. Have a look at them on my Etsy store for detailed descriptions of the themes.
