ARTIST TALKS
An artist talk and presentation of works at the Thom Browne Flagship boutique in NYC during the brand's twentieth anniversary year made for a special occasion. JP spoke with curator Lauren R. O’Connell sharing insights few get to hear about his inspirations, like how the silk and textiles in his work originates from his time spent on Wall Street as a young analyst, living through many crashes, trying to navigate the markets and totems, and what it means to work outdoors versus indoors.
Artist James Perkins opens up in this special film shot on Fire Island New York about creating “post-totem” artworks that are both sculpture and painting, deftly referencing the history of land art and American minimalism. It takes up to two years to complete a single work, which are subject both to Perkins’ careful manipulations and the forces of nature. Rather than presenting raw earth as the art object, Perkins transforms nature into an art object in situ at his home and studio on Fire Island in New York. He refers to his works as “post-totem” structures, paintings and sculptures that conjure the ancestral spirit of his great grandmother’s Chickasaw tradition, and go further to reference totemic symbols of power—the coded behaviors we adopt to navigate systems of identity, society, and capital in the United States. Through his practice, he situates himself in a unique methodology for art making that merges the philosophies of Land Artists like Michael Heizer, Robert Irwin, and James Turrell, with the sensibilities of minimalist painters like Ad Reinhardt, Agnes Martin, and Mark Rothko. Though these artists allowed Perkins to comprehend the limitlessness of material and form, his work depicts a contemporary politic beyond these movements, which centered white men at the epoch of American industrialization. Instead he activates this history to contemplate how abstraction can invoke a society that is postmodern, postrace, and postgender, using land to invite a harmonic, inclusive vision of the future.
Ahead of his solo show at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) in the Fall of 2025, Perkins visited the Cattle Track Arts Compound to install a site-specific land art work and participate in an artist talk with show curator Lauren R. O’Connell. During his one-week residency, Perkins replaced his Fire Island beach studio for the Sonoran Desert’s blazing sun, dry winds, rough brush, and curious coyotes.
For the ocean racer, Conrad Colman, sailing is an art. For the multimedia artist, James Perkins, art is a sport. Both Colman and Perkins have honed their crafts to a science. Each relies on the power of nature - the weather, the wind, the sun, the ocean, and the stars. Despite their professions seeming very different on the surface, they came together with an innovative partnership to magnify their common message about the beauty, strength, and fragility of humanity and nature’s interdependence.
On November 22nd, 2022, after a 13-day race across the Atlantic, Colman crossed the finish line of the 3,542 nautical miles solo-skippered Route du Rhum, with Perkins’ silk canvases flying high. Racing from Saint-Malo (France) to Pointe-à-Pitre (Guadeloupe), Perkins’ bright silk canvases were affixed to the boat’s life lines and sails as they were exposed to and transformed by the ocean elements at speeds up to 30 knots on Colman’s seafaring “studio.”
“My sculptures are what I call post-totem structures, for all mankind. They symbolize that we are all in this together. Having Conrad collaborate and fly my canvasses as a flag for humanity’s mutual interest in caring for and sharing the planet is moving. I am interested in capturing the energy and beauty of the ocean, the example of Conrad’s passion and endurance, and through our collaboration to demonstrate the human virtue of weathering storms and pushing through to achieve a long term goal.” - James Perkins
Typically, Perkins’ studio is his Fire Island beach, where he allows the sea salt, ocean spray, sun, rain, and hurricane-force winds to weather his all-natural silk sculptures to unveil dynamic, layered, and utterly transformed totems. Using nature as his paintbrush, Perkins’ art demonstrates the awesome power and beauty of our interdependence with our environment. In this race, nature was full speed ahead with Colman at the helm.
“Within an hour of the race start, art was happening! Not only was the race exhilarating but to be the custodian and choreographer of James’ art while watching the minute-by-minute transformation of the silk- both in color and texture -was amazing.” - Conrad Colman
Colman, the offshore skipper with dual nationality from New Zealand and the USA who lives in France, has circumnavigated the globe three times and is the first skipper to complete the around the world Vendée Globe without using fossil fuels. He intends to do the same again, but faster, in 2024, with more of James’ silk onboard.