RAiR | 1977-78

Peter Bilan

Peter Bilan's first museum experiences were at the Roswell Museum and Art Center when stationed at Walker Air Force Base in the early 1960s. He returned to the museum to exhibit his sculptures in 1978. Born in Bowling Green, Ohio, Peter Bilan (b. 1940) earned a BS in Art Education in 1967 at Ashland College in Ohio. While studying for his MA at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff in 1968-69, he began exploring fabricated kinetic sculpture.  Peter moved to Albuquerque in 1971 to curate art at the Museum of Albuquerque until 1977, after which he taught sculpture at the University of Mexico. While there, he developed sculptural ideas defining interior space with linear volumes through formed wood and metal presented through suspension from ceilings and movement through balance as well as objects rolling on wheels. During his residency, he was able to experiment with more technical methods of forming wood and making larger, more complex sculptures while continuing to explore scale, space and movement. In the late 1990s, he founded the company Imaginair Designs crafting rubber stamps of a wide range of aircraft. This past decade, his artwork has become more political as he moved into low-relief mixed media assemblages dealing with aspects of social injustice.