Peter Thomashow

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I am fascinated by invisible forces. My first collection was at age seven. It was magnets. I later (age ten) became intrigued by fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals (rocks that glow under ultraviolet light). I collected insects as a teenager and then studied the evolution of color in butterflies at Hampshire College also becoming interested in insect metamorphosis. I have played the guitar since age thirteen and studied resonant tape looping with Steve Reich at the New School when seventeen. I assembled a collection of Nineteenth Century Electro-magnetic Philosophical Instruments which is now housed in a private museum. The latest interest is a re-visit:  colour and toys. All of this has come from a desire to immerse myself in the unknown, the invisible, the uncanny. Play, treasure hunting, time and memory are all at work here as well. Inward and outward exploration, dreaming, sensing and feeling are the forces which bind art and science (which, in fact, are identical modes of inquiry and discovery). I have a strong desire to preserve these special moments.

Bio

Peter Thomashow is a physician, artist, collector and musician living in Vermont. He is on the faculty at the Dartmouth College School of Medicine where he teaches Psychiatry. Dr. Thomashow contributed the essays "The Old Curiosity Shop" to Cabinet Magazine (Issue Nineteen) and "At The Open Gate" to The Saranac Review (Issue Four). He was also the subject of the article "The Doctor Who Paints Radios" in The New York Times in 1987 and featured in Metropolis and Industrial Design magazines that same year. He has performed three concerts at The Main Street Museum utilizing electric guitar, vocals and analog electronica since 2007. His 2009 show at the MSM, The Wolfson Memorial Laboratory of Colour, featured constructions and assemblages subtitled Toys From A Parallel Universe. He is currently working on a series of philosophical toy dioramas and the continuing multi-media Wolfson Memorial Laboratory of Colour project.