Printmaker Richard Peterson

House Music Gets Him on the Dance Floor

Richard Peterson is a printmaker and professor of art at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, California. Before participating in a panel on the role the arts play in building communities, Peterson sat down in the Zócalo green room to talk about his massive porch, why he watches Law and Order at 2 a.m., and his love of house music.

Q:

It’s your last meal; what do you order?


A:

Salade Niçoise with anchovies.


Q:

Who’s the one person, living or dead, you’d most like to have a beer with?


A:

Toulouse-Lautrec, the artist.


Q:

What’s your worst habit?


A:

I don’t think it’s the worst, but people do: I smoke a pipe.


Q:

Where do you like to smoke?


A:

In my art studio. I used to like to smoke on campus, but we can’t do that anymore. And on my front porch because it’s really a nice porch. Mine’s the biggest in the world—it’s 47 feet long. We have porch parties.


Q:

What’s hanging on your living room walls?


A:

Oh wow. Tom Huck, Paul Wunderlich, Federico Castellón, Dave Morrison, Wayne Campbell, Michael Barnes.


Q:

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?


A:

Washing dishes for the Art Institute when I was in art school.


Q:

What do you wake up to?


A:

Law and Order at 2 a.m. I’m narcoleptic, so I don’t sleep.


Q:

What does it take to get you out on a dance floor?


A:

Good music. It’s got to be house music. It can’t be old fogey stuff.


Q:

What do you do to relax?


A:

Make a lithograph. Draw.


Q:

What word or phrase do you use most often?


A:

You can’t print it!