Sonja Peterson

Sonja Peterson is a visual artist working in the Pacific Northwest. Her work explores “the uncanny divide between beastly and beautiful, defined by a preoccupation with bodies and skin.”

Her most recent ceramic sculpture series, Sour Parade, features strange, anthropomorphic lemon creatures posed in various acts of folly. Their thick, lumpy, bumpy, lemon-yellow skin covers humanoid figures. Their unsettling appearance pokes at our anxieties, jarring loose the unsettling presence of badgering unpleasantness that lives just below the surface. “It’s like catching an unflattering glimpse of yourself in the mirror. You saw what you saw but refuse to own it as your reflection.”

Placed in awkward recreational settings with beachballs or casually wearing gym socks, they are oddly and intimately exposed yet blithely unselfconscious. The pieces have a disquieting charm tinged with pathos. They are whimsical warriors living imperfect, wounded lives. Sonja views their flaws and imperfections as vehicles for healing and sources of resiliency.

AMcE Exhibitions
Good Form September 2025