Corinne D. Peterson has been making clay sculpture for 17 years and creating public art since 1996. As a public artist, Peterson specializes in large and small-scale collaborative murals in clay, recently working on the Chicago Public Art Group’s Hopes and Dreams, an award-winning piece in a Chicago Transit Authority transfer tunnel. Her first collaborative work, Solidarity Quilt ‘03 with Central American refugees, was created for Central American Realities, a bi-lingual exhibit that Peterson both organized and curated. Since 1996, she has led or co-led the creation of twelve public art works in the greater Chicago area. In 1988, Peterson organized a series of workshops incorporating her psychotherapy profession and her art. At Lill Street Art Center, she began teaching classes in clay sculpture in 1996.

Peterson’s studio work has been exhibited in six solo exhibits, including Notre Dame University in Indiana (1998), Northwestern University in Evanston (1995), Wood Street Gallery (1996) and Gallery 1021 (2002) in Chicago. She has exhibited extensively in group shows locally and nationally, including SOFA Chicago (Sculpture, Objects and Functional Art), 2002 and 1994. Her works have been shown at Perimeter Gallery in Chicago and Andrew Lidgus Galleries in Granville, Ohio, as well as in the gallery at Lill Street Art Center. Peterson won a scholarship to a bronze course at Anderson Ranch Art Center in Colorado and received a CAAP grant in 1992 and 1994. In 1998, she spent a month in residence at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. Peterson was an artist in residence at the Ragdale Foundation in the spring of 2003

Corinne D. Peterson Artist Statement

In my work as a studio artist and as a public artist, I am influenced by stories and by decay and growth in nature.

I grew up on a farm close to nature. Now in the city, I see beauty in nature's impact on the aging surfaces of urban architecture. I contemplate what lasts and what changes. Who constructed these sidewalks, doorways, walls, buildings? How? Why? They reveal stories of the site's inhabitants and suggest psychological metaphors for our lives.

In my former profession as a psychotherapist, I helped clients discover their nature--their real selves--and helped them deal with loss and growth in their lives. Metaphors helped them tell their dreams and stories and describe their experiences. My own dreams about clay objects spurred me to begin making art with clay.

Clay, the primary material of my art, is the result of an eons-old process of decay and growth. Rock, worn by wind and water, changes into fine grains, which when wet can be shaped. Kiln-fired, clay turns stone hard. Its durability makes it a source for learning symbols and stories of past cultures. And clay artwork will last long into the future.

When I work alone, these thought processes are internal. In my current series of clay relief wall tiles, Trans/Forming Walls, I explore the constantly changing interior walls we construct to help us manage our relationships. On the tiles, I manipulate textures and colors to suggest opposing forces of growth and decay, relationships between past and present, and sequences of experience.

When I do public art, I help participants use their symbols and stories, often through metaphors. I encourage them to think about the meaning of the architectural elements of their public space. While honoring the diversity of participants, I urge them to get below the surface to universal themes. The images they carve in clay to express these themes enable the group to see their lives in terms of deep history. The installed work becomes a meaningful new dimension in the community.

Shared experiences were the basis for To Our Brothers and Sisters who Died Too Soon, a mural for a former doorway in the Beth-Anne Life Center courtyard. The group of teenagers I led was united by powerful symbols memorializing friends, who were victims of gang violence. Golden Spiral of Fire, Air, Water, Earth at Oak Ridge School, installed on the ground of a courtyard, is used as an outdoor classroom for storytelling. Since all the images students carved were from their drawings, the process itself led to telling stories.

In 1999, Juan Chavez and I and our team taught more than 4000 people to make personal tiles for Hopes and Dreams, a large mural in a connecting link between two CTA rapid transit stations. We used the carved tiles, created new ones and collaged them with tile mosaic to form the 1800-square-foot installation.

As my personal and public work develops, I want to continue to explore stories and metaphors in nature and look for forms to express my discoveries.

Golden Spiral of Fire-Air-Water-Earth, 2001, a 150-square-foot clay mural in the courtyard of Oak Ridge School, Palos Hills, Illinois, by Corinne Peterson.


Hopes and Dreams, 2002, handmade and commercial ceramic tile mosaic, installed in a Chicago Transit Authority link between two lines, by Corinne Peterson and Juan Chávez.








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