WHO IS MISTER PEEL?

Director, composer, musician, animator, illustrator, video designer, and interdisciplinary artist, Curtis Peel seeks to expand his creative knowledge and skills as tools to make powerful, interactive experiences, build stronger connections, and ultimately develop and contribute to a thriving artistic community worldwide. He is the founder of Avalanche Artists.

Born in Dallas, TX, Curtis Peel has long reveled in exploring and adapting to divergent worlds. He later spent 5 years in Boulder, CO, where he attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, majoring in music composition and thoroughly explored the weird world of interdisciplinary art. Provoked and inspired by professor and local artist Michael Theodore, Curtis developed and tailored his skills in video editing, animation, programming, and interdisciplinary performance. 

After a longtime romanticism with New York City, he finally moved there in 2008 to further pursue and develop his vision. He then adopted Brooklyn as his new home and started Futurist, his current and primary artistic passion and multimedia vision. Futurist is an experimental, alt rock band that delivers nuanced, poignant song-writing with a fiercely fresh sonic palette and inspired vision. Truly embracing the spirit of collaboration, their live shows often feature an inventive stage-aesthetic, video projections, and audience interaction. Futurist released their first full-length studio album War is Yesterday on June 30th, 2011 with a spectacular three-floor multi-media installation and performance that involved over fifty artists.

Curtis’s distinctive compositional style explores the ways in which sound and lyrics can be re-conceived, manipulated, and imaginatively presented with the help of computers while retaining its sincere, human element. In August of 2007, Curtis released his self-produced experimental album wings on Thursday, an innovative blending of acoustic music with computer effects and programing. In December of 2008, Curtis released a rock album, Polite To Point, recorded in Boulder, Colorado.

Curtis has also produced several experimental films, digital shorts, and music videos, collaborating with artists such as Dani Barbieri, Maxine Nienow, Dawn of Man Productions, DMZL, and the bands Spaceface, Turkuaz, soft talon, Dopapod, Cue No Ego, Emily Simone, and rapper Sosay. A segment of his short film, “tightrope with tongue,” was shown at the 2007 New West Electro-Acoustic Music Organization Festival. In October his film for “Grand Canyon Hymns”, a collaborative project with composer Dan Kellogg, was premiered at the Smithsonian Art Museum in Washington D.C. with the 21st Century Consort. In September, 2010, "Colony Collapse Disorder," a collaboration with musician/programmer, Nathan Wheeler, was performed at the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts in Minneapolis. 

Commercially, Curtis has worked freelance in NYC for over a decade and has contracted work through companies such as 360i, Roundhead Creative, And Now Media, and CKP Media as an animator, video editor, musician, graphic artist, and web designer. He has crafted visual concepts and brands for startups, artists, production companies, and events.

Curtis currently lives, works, and performs in Austin, TX.

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