About

 

Peter Quinn. Creative Director, Designer, Artist, Strategist.

 
Great creative isn’t decoration. It’s a catalyst. Done right it inspires, persuades, and moves people to actually do something, and that’s the only kind I’m interested in making. Whatever the medium or the scale, I see the work the same way: not just to communicate, but to push the world somewhere better by making people feel connected, making hard things make sense, and making the whole thing easier to use. I’m a communicator and a strategist. I’m also a cultural agent and a social provocateur, because the work that changes anything usually has to be both.

That comes from running two engines at once. My client work and my independent, experimental work feed each other, constantly. The experiments show me what a form can do before anyone’s attached a brief to it. The client work puts real stakes under the experiments. Neither one is a hobby. Both are how I think, and the crossover is where the good ideas come from.

Right now I’m looking for organizations with something real at stake, in the arts, the environment, public health, and civic life. If you’re trying to make something complicated feel clear, or to make people care about something that deserves it, that’s the work I want. Bring me the problem that doesn’t have an obvious answer.

On the Art of Experimentation

Most of the work on this site was made for clients, but a lot of it starts in the experiments. Independent work is where I test what an idea can do with nothing to lose, and it keeps finding its way back into the paid work. Below is some of that exhibition history, and a couple of pieces that show what it looks like in practice.

Exhibition Experience

2025 Anniversary Show, Current Space, Baltimore
2022 Words That Light, Light City Installation, Baltimore
2014 Poster Heroes, The Others Fair, Turin, Italy
2013 Poster Heroes, Biennale Democrazia, Turin, Italy
2013 Radio, Group Show, Madison, Wisconsin
2010 Midway Exhibit, Curator, Artscape, Baltimore, MD
2008 Creative Capitalism, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2008 Capitalism, Performance at the Whitney Biennial, Neighborhood Public Radio
2008 Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan
2007 America For Sale, Protest Gallery, Manhattan, NY
2006 Holy Crap, Creative Alliance, Baltimore, MD
2006 Group Group, Commonwealth Gallery, Madison, WI
2006 Notebook, Current Gallery, Baltimore, MD
2006 PrintRoom, Bureau Gallery, Salford, England
2005 PrintRoom, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands
2005 Friends and Friends of Friends, Artscape, Baltimore, MD
2004 Two-person show, G-Spot, Baltimore, MD
2000 One-man show, October Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands
1997 Exchange Show, Artist and Curator, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington DC
1997 Options, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington DC
1996 Surveillance, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington DC