Selected works by Sarah Perkins


Walstrand Walls

This is from a series that I was doing with Gwen Walstrand, based on what we’ve seen in Cairo, Illinois. She takes pictures, and I respond to the photographs that she takes. I really like the idea of it sort of getting double translated, her interpretation of it and then my interpretation of her interpretation. I like that idea of people influencing each other. Sarah Perkins

Building with blue exterior wall adjacent to brick pavers
Brick building with white stucco next to a grassy lot
Front view of bowl with blue building design
Top view of bowl with blue building design
Front view of bowl with brick and white stucco design
Top view of bowl with brick and white stucco design

Building photos by Gwen Walstrand • Bowl photos by Tom Davis

Green gourd-like container

Perkins loves to play with texture and draws inspiration from a variety of sources. She says that for this vessel, called Gourd, she made the surface “smooth and satin like the skin of a vegetable so you’d want to touch it.”

Cactus-inspired container

Cactus required Perkins to hand-drill 300 holes in the body of the vessel. She then inserted wires at precise angles so they would stick out in proper proportions. She finished the piece by soldering the wires to the vessel and melting their ends.

Highly-saturated blue container
Bowl with black inside and striped accent
Two bowls with geometric motif
Yellow bowl with two red marks
Orange bowl with silver and red spirals on the interior

Perkins says, “My work is changing right now, and I’m getting a much brighter color palette than I have before. I think having gone to India had a lot to do with it.”

Roe-inspired container closed
Roe-inspired container opened

In Roe, Perkins employed an ancient technique called ‘granulation,’ which uses chemistry, evaporation and extremely high temperatures to fuse tiny balls of metal onto a larger piece without any solder. It took her days just to place the metal balls.

Blue container with multi pointed bottom and diamond pattern
Detail of blue container with multi pointed bottom and diamond pattern
Matte black multi-bottomed container with blue-to-green lid
Detail of matte black multi-bottomed container with blue-to-green lid
Red brooch with light blue accent and pearl-studded rim

“I’m interested in getting down to the formal fundamentals,” Perkins says. “Shape, texture, color and nothing else.”

Orange textured bowl with blue interior

Perkins looks to the natural world for textural references and combinations. About this piece, Lichen, she says, “I like for the inside and outside to be different. So the inside may be smooth and shiny, but the outside is rough and tactile.”

Black crescent-on-black circular field brooch

Perkins’ jewelry often plays with graphic, minimalist combinations. Of this piece, she says, “I like the texture of the druzy stone, which I bought as a piece, next to the texture of the enamel.”

Red container with with blue interior and accents and gold lip
Red container with metal lid
Blue and green patterned container with red accents
White container with multi-pointed bottom and red circular accents

Historical art and fashion inspire some of Perkins’ pieces — like this one, which was crafted to look like the gores of a ball gown. “I thought it looked like Cinderella’s dress,” she says.

Red container with multi-pointed bottom

Perkins mixed red glass seed beads in with a range of red enamels. “The beads’ melting temperature is a little higher than enamel,” she says, “so it’s got that mottled quality like moss.”

Oval brooch with glass accent on green field
Circular brooch with field transitioning from blue to ochre
Snowball-inspired brooch with three green accents

Perkins says this group of jewelry is largely “about what’s perfect placement at the moment. Maybe an hour later, I would’ve put that stone in a different place. But right then, it was very deliberately exactly there.”

Photos by Tom Davis


5 Responses
  • Linda Lankford

    Absolute perfection.

  • Cory Lawson

    These are wonderful on their own, but especially when artists work together.

  • Billie Follensbee

    Gorgeous works and gorgeous photos.

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