Mikey Peterson is a filmmaker, musician, composer, and educator who lives in Chicago. He teaches hospitalized children through Snow City Arts, and he has several musical projects such as his band The Trust. Recently I spoke with Peterson about his influences and his ongoing projects.

DG: When did you first get interested in making art?

MP: Growing up an only child, I had to learn how to entertain myself at an early age. My mom always valued art and creativity, so we usually had art supplies around the house. I'd make houses and castles out of Popsicle sticks, paper towel tubes and construction paper. My grandparents gave me my first tape recorder when I was 9 or 10 and I’d tape random bits of my family's conversation, as well as create my own fictional radio programs, experimenting with different voices and recording my albums onto tape. This was probably the first time I'd ever edited sound though I had no idea that this was what I was doing at the time.

DG: Who are some of your influences with film?

MP: Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Wong Kar Wai, Wim Wenders, Tony Oursler, Fritz Lang, Michel Gondry…

DG: Who are some of your musical influences?

MP: David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, Brian Eno, Nina Simone, Morrissey…

DG: Who is a teacher who has influenced your approach toward teaching art? What do you think is important about what that teacher taught you?

MP: Scott Rankin, one of my video art professors in college. Whenever I'm developing a curriculum for a video class I think of the content and technique that he taught me in an intro video course. There was one exercise in particular where he had us collect 10 objects where one was somehow connected to the next one and that one was connected to the next. A basic example would be candle to light bulb with the common idea being light but then the light bulb would be connected a photo of Albert Einstein, so the light bulb changes from the symbol of light and becomes a symbol for ideas. Scott taught me how to think abstractly and develop my artistic eye.

Also, my high school choir instructor, Jack Mayer, pushed me on stage at a young age and spent extra time out of his day to help me develop my singing voice and my confidence. I’m grateful for that.

DG: What are some musical projects you've been working on?

MP: Currently my working band, The Trust, is recording demos and will hopefully record a full-length album in the near future. I also have a studio project called The Duende Bros with poet Eric Elshtain. He had a surplus of lyrics about personified inanimate objects and I wrote and recorded music for them – they kind of have an electro-pop/ early 1980’s feel.

DG: What would you say is an important connection between who you are as a musician, filmmaker, and educator?

MP: The goal for all of these processes, or any art for that matter, is for the viewer/listener/student to gain a new perspective -- to see and feel things differently within their lives and within themselves. If done well, music, film, and the teaching process all succeed at this.

When creating, art is constantly in flux. You might have a general idea of what your goal or vision might entail but it will always change and be different than what was originally intended. Music and film, specifically, consist of the succession of sound and image, and teaching, to me, is relaying a succession of ideas. Like life, everything’s in motion and always changing.

DG:What is one project that you’ve worked on with kids at Snow City Arts?

MP: We just finished a surrealistic horror movie called The Lost House. It was shot in miniature using cardboard, paper, and clay, and focused on suspense, tone and mood as opposed to gore. It’s kind of a cross between Eraserhead and Mr. Bill.

DG: What is one aspect of that project that you can describe, perhaps a particular “eureka” moment that a kid had, while working on that, which highlights how that kid learned something, understood something in a deep way?

MP: There’s a scene towards the end where our main character gets sucked into a television set and we couldn’t figure out why he would go up to the TV and touch it. I was working with one of the patients and asked her this question and she brilliantly said, “He wants to go home.’ It was then that I realized that not only was this the incentive for the character to touch the TV, but that the house he was in symbolized the hospital that my student wanted so badly to leave. We then placed early clips of the film, from before the main character gets trapped in the house, onto the television screen and the entire plot magically fell into place.

DG: What’s one project you’ll be working on in the summer?

MP: I'm working on a video collage tentatively called Night Lights that explores the tricks our minds play when we’re in the dark. I'm also recording songs with my band The Trust.

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