Memento of Mortality \;
\nMy grandmother Perkins had a small room filled with porcelain d olls. It was a little room that opened off the side of the front of the ho use\, almost like a tea or reading room. Light came through a large\, half -oval-shaped window\, softened by baby-blue lace curtains. \;
\nThe dolls sat quietly in their places\, dressed mostly in Victorian dresse s and carefully preserved. Each one held the strange stillness of somethin g made to resemble a living person. Some had glass eyes. All of them had n ames. \;
\nThere was a family joke about my grandmother. She wou ld say she was going to go out there\, sit with a cup of coffee\, and talk to her dolls. Someone in the family would inevitably say\, &ldquo\;As lon g as they don't talk back to Mom.&rdquo\; \;
\nI say\, I think t hey always did. \;
\nThat room stayed with me. \;
\nIt is a place where I often take pleasure in visualizing my memories. \;
\nYears later\, I was sitting on my couch in Philadelphia with a ne ck injury and beginning to feel depressed. I could no longer work on the a rtworks that had been in progress before I was injured. At the time\, I ha d been working on a series of three-dimensional figures. When I could no l onger physically continue that work\, I pulled out every sketchbook I had and picked up a pen. \;
\nI found myself wanting to make a figur e&mdash\;a sculpture\, a figurine&mdash\;of every person I could think of. \;
\nSo I began drawing. \;
\n\nI decided to d raw\, gesturally\, every personality I could remember. \;
\nI di d not want to make figures of family and friends. Those relationships carr ied too much emotional weight. I knew something about their souls. Instead \, I reached into popular culture\, history\, music\, movies\, television\ , and toys&mdash\;images and personalities that had entered my imagination throughout my life. \;
\nThey were\, in a sense\, soulless shad ows of my past. \;
\nI needed to create their souls. \;
\ nThe life we give to figurines is part of what interests me as an artis t. \;
\nAn action figure\, a Barbie doll\, a porcelain figurine\ , a carved wooden figure\, or a small sculpture can begin as an object man ufactured or made by someone else. But once we place it in our home\, our collection\, our artwork\, or our memory\, it begins to take on another li fe. \;
\nWe give these objects identities. \;
\nWe giv e them stories. \;
\nWe give them personalities\, histories\, he roes\, villains\, families\, fears\, desires\, and sometimes even memories that belong more to us than to the objects themselves. \;
\nI never spoke to these people. \;
\n\n
They never
knew me. \;
Yet they occupied some small space within my memo ry. They became part of the landscape of my life. \;
\nI would t hink of someone\, make a quick drawing from memory\, write down who they w ere\, and move on to the next. \;
\nI wasn't trying to create ac curate portraits. I was trying to capture what remained&mdash\;the gesture \, posture\, attitude\, silhouette\, or presence of a person as they exist ed in my memory. \;
\nEventually\, there were hundreds of drawin gs. \;
\nWhen my partner and I moved to North Little Rock\, Arka nsas\, and I got my studio up and running\, I returned to them. I cut the figures from the paper\, glued them onto cardboard\, and cut them out agai n. \;
\nThe drawings became objects. \;
\nThe objects became figures. \;
\nAnd the figures became a collection of memo ries. \;
\nI see a connection between these figures and the porc elain dolls in my grandmother's little room. \;
\nBoth are attem pts to hold onto something that cannot actually be held. \;
\nA likeness can be preserved\, but a life cannot. \;
\nA figure can remain standing long after the person it represents is gone. \;
\nMemento means a reminder&mdash\;a physical object that causes us to rem ember. \;
\n\n
For me\, these figures are mementos o
f people I never knew\, but who nevertheless became part of my life throug
h memory and imagination. \;
They are not portraits of relatio nships. \;
\nThey are portraits of remembrance. \;
\nI think about mortality through the act of making them. Every figure is a s mall refusal to let a memory completely disappear. At the same time\, ever y figure reminds me that preservation is impossible. \;
\nThe pe rson is not there. \;
\nOnly the image remains. \;
\nP erhaps that is what my grandmother's porcelain dolls taught me before I ha d the words for it. \;
\nA room can be filled with figures and s till be filled with absence. \;
\nWe make things to remember.&nb sp\;
\nWe make figures because people disappear. \;
\nWe m ake mementos because we know we will too. \;
\nThrough this proc ess\, I began to understand that I wasn't simply making a collection of ch aracters. I was excavating my own memory. I was reaching backward through movies\, music\, television\, history\, toys\, and popular culture and pul ling out the people who had somehow marked the passage of my life. \;< /p>\n
I couldn't go back and recover the years themselves. \;
\n< p>So I grabbed the people. \;\nhttps://lamanlibrary.libnet.info/ev ent/17483579 URL;VALUE=URI:https://lamanlibrary.libnet.info/event/17483579 ATTACH:https://static.libnet.info/images/events/lamanlibrary/PaulPerkins.p ng END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR