Bio
Pete Driessen is a Minneapolis-based multipractice visual artist, painter, sculptor, curator, and cultural producer who creates conceptual paintings, found object installations, interdisciplinary sculpture projects, and participatory public art that explore the visceral connections of social, spatial, and material dynamics. His past and current artwork blend mixed media, sculpture, installation, and public art into an interdisciplinary confluence of ideas: site and space, location and identity, and capitalism and the commons.
Driessen received his MFA in Visual Studies at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT; a Post Graduate Diploma in Graphic Design from The Portfolio Center, Atlanta, GA; a BA in Studio Arts from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN; and studied Visual Communication at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Pete’s exhibition record includes regional and national solo and group exhibitions at a wide range of venues, including Blanden Museum, Duluth Art Institute, Holter Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Muskegon Museum of Art, Plains Art Museum, Rockford Art Museum, The Soap Factory, TuckUnder Projects, Southern Oregon University, University of Minnesota, and the Walker Art Center Open Field.
Driessen has been awarded regional grants and awards, including a 2022 Minnesota State Arts Board-Creative Support Grant for Individuals for his Migratory Wing/Prairie Wildflower Bed project at the Kaddatz Building, Fergus Falls, MN; a 2021 Minnesota State Arts Board-Creative Support Grant for Individuals for his Wing Dam project at the Anderson Center for the Arts, Red Wing, MN; a 2019 Forecast Public Art Mid-Career Project grant for his Pivotal Turntable Tactics project at the Northern Pacific Center, Brainerd, MN; a 2017 The Soap Factory/ReThinking Public Space in MN grant for his Trestle Support Systems project; a 2015 Jerome/FSP Fellowship at Franconia Sculpture Park for his Franconia Boat Tower sculpture; a 2014 MRAC Next Step grant for his Silverwood Park project; and three MSAB Artist Initiative grants.
His artwork, projects, and curation have been critically reviewed in multiple formats, including: Minnesota Artist Pete Driessen’s Healing art is inspired by shuttered Fergus Falls mental hospital, by Sheila Regan, In Artscape, MinnPost, March 2023; The Gist of Ist, In Fiction NonFiction/Story Telling in Art Criticism, by An Paenhuysen, Node Center for Curatorial Studies, Berlin, Germany, 2017; Trestle Support Systems/Entrepreneur of the Multitude, by Sheila Dickinson, self-published 2017; along with MPR ArtHounds, KFAI Art Matters, InStudio magazine, Studio Visit magazine, MinnPost, MNartists.org, and the MplsStarTribune. He was named by Minneapolis City Pages a 2015 Artist of the Year.
Driessen extends his artistic practice via curation, collaboration, and community activity, most recently working with his partner, Collaborative Seamstress, on an ongoing painting and textile collaboration. He directs and curates a hybridic, nondescript ether-based gallery known as TuckUnder Projects & Pavilion that specializes in emerging and midcareer artists focusing on conceptual visual arts practice, curatorial projects, and institutional critique.
