Currents: Live at Drift Exchange

statement

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My work as a sculptor comes from a lifelong enthusiasm for making things with my hands. I am interested in how physical objects can be modified and organized to tell my personal stories.

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In my recent work, I've collected discarded objects, tools, old board games, wooden toys, and handmade souvenirs. I sort these items into groups by material, color, and texture, using them much like a painter uses paint. From these collections, with wood as the matrix, I translate ideas into sculptures. Because these objects carry history from their past lives, combining them allows me to explore ideas about memory and everyday life. I make work that encourages people to pause and look closely at items they might otherwise ignore.

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biography

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Peter Bilan's interest in art began with building and making objects as a child, and has been a creative habit that has lasted over 75 years. He built on this interest in college, focusing his practice on careful construction, woodworking, and working with materials in new ways.

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Alongside making his own art, he spent over two decades as an art educator teaching students at every level, from elementary school through high school, as well as college sculpture classes at Oklahoma State University and the University of New Mexico. 

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Beginning in 1971 he worked as an exhibition preparator at the Nevada State Museum, then curator of exhibitions and education at the Museum of Albuquerque. A major shift in his career came in 1977, when he spent a year at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program (RAiR). There, free from daily routine, he completed 52 wooden sculptures, including kinetic pieces incorporating wheels and swinging pendulums. While in Roswell, he developed a technique for bending wood using ammonia. In 1979, he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to document safe ways to use this process, leading to commissions for two large public sculptures in Santa Fe.

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Through the late 1970s and 1980s, he was an active member of Albuquerque United Artists, and his work was shown by galleries across New Mexico and Texas. In 1989, he left teaching to establish a business designing and manufacturing high quality art rubber stamps of historical aviation images. He continued the business for 25 years, marketing his designs nationally and internationally.

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In 2014, he stepped away from the business to return to full-time studio art. Today, his focus is on narrative collages and sculptures made from found objects. He lives and works in Albuquerque where he has lived with his family since 1971.