Peter Happel Christian

About

Peter Happel Christian is an artist based in St. Cloud, Minnesota. He grew up in Eastern Iowa about an hour west of the Mississippi River and spent five years living in the American West which had a deep impact on his perceptions of history, nature, location, experience and representation. His expanded studio practice explores the experience of nature, time, and perception at the intersection of photography, sculpture and performance. Peter holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and a BFA from the University of Iowa. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Art Department at St. Cloud State University.

He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally and it can be found in the collections of the Tucson Museum of Art, Center for Creative Photography, Franklin Furnace Archive (Brooklyn, NY), San Francisco Art Institute artist book collection and the International Center for Photography Library (NYC). He has received funding for his work through research grants at Youngstown State University (2007), an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council (2008), research grants at St. Cloud State University (2011, 2013, 2014), an Artist Career Development Grant from the Central Minnesota Arts Board (FY 2015), and an Artist Initiative Grant for Photography from the Minnesota State Arts Board (FY 2015). He is a 2011-12 recipient of a McKnight Artist Fellowship for Photography and a 2015 recipient of an Ansel Adams Fellowship from the Center for Creative Photography. His first monograph, Half Wild, was published by Conveyor Editions in September 2014.

For the next ten years, 2016-2018, 20” x 16”, archival pigment print. In 2016, I needed to renew my passport and made my own portrait. In the process, I photographed myself fourteen times in an attempt to get what seemed like the “right” expression to officially represent myself for moving across international borders.

“We live among countless landscapes of memory in this country. They convey both remembrance and omission, privileging particular arcs of story while neglecting so many others.”
— Lauret Savoy
“It’s not about where you live, but how you’re livin’. ”
— Lou Barlow, on stage at the Union Bar, Iowa CIty, IA, February 19, 1997.

Peter Happel Christian is an artist whose work studies time, processes, and chance at the intersection of photography, sculpture, installation, and artist books. Common subjects in his work are nature, the “ordinary” world of his own life, and a conflation of the two. His works range from intuitive projects, to research-dependent projects, to collaborative projects with artists and non-artists alike. Peter grew up about an hour west of the Mississippi River in a diverse, working class neighborhood of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As an adult, he lived in Oregon and Arizona for five years which reprogrammed his perceptions of history, place, and representation. In 2006, he returned to the Midwest to northeast Ohio where he learned new lessons about land, economics, and labor. In 2009, he relocated to Minnesota/Mni Sóta Makoce, a landscape defined by receding glaciers and broken treaties. Since 2012 he has published printed matter, digital media, and numerous artist’s books with Clear As Day (MN & PA), Skylark Editions (Chicago) and Conveyor Editions (NJ). Same Sum, his second book with Conveyor Studio, was published in 2022. Happel Christian holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and a BFA from the University of Iowa. Currently, he is Professor of Integrated Media and Chair of the Department of the Arts at St. Cloud State University.

Download Peter’s CV. 

Email: happelchristian@gmail.com