When Haley Perkins and her husband, Ben, lived in Cincinnati, they found it difficult to meet people and make friends.
A lifelong artist, Perkins decided to join a meet-up group in a park that had planned to do Halloween crafts but encouraged anyone to bring along whatever artwork they wanted.
At the time, Perkins was starting to paint some of her beloved toys from the 1990s, so she brought along a carrier easel, her paint supplies and a McDonald’s McNugget Buddy that she had planned to paint.
Perkins set the toy on the side of her easel and did her best to connect with what she quickly learned was a much younger crowd of crafters, not artists.
“No one was curious about me or asked about me, but I tried to stay in the conversation as much as possible,” she said. “At the very end, this person who was on the other side of my easel saw the toy, tapped its head and said, ‘What is that?’”
Perkins told her of the toy, but that did not change the puzzled look she was receiving. The encounter struck her as odd, and she left unfulfilled but also disheartened and dejected.
Perkins realized later she had not shown her the painting and assumed the person did not make the connection that Perkins was painting from observation and not simply displaying a toy from several decades ago.
Now the public programs and engagement officer at the Stamps Gallery, Perkins looks back on the experience — and the resulting painting — with a laugh. The majority of her connections that have resulted from art have been much more rewarding than the meet-up group.
“I suppose the McNugget Buddy painting just wasn’t for that audience and now that I’ve finished it and moved away, it’s just a funny story,” she said. “Now these unserious paintings are about my resilience of feeling rejected by these people I didn’t know and feeling proud that I’m painting just for me because it makes me happy.”
Perkins comes from a long line of creators. Her parents owned an antiques business and would take Perkins and her older sister to auctions in search of treasures.
“It’s the most boring thing for a kid, but now I love museums, I love antiques, I love history,” Perkins said. “I grew up going to auctions and antique malls all the time, and they’d buy stuff and fix it up.”
Her sister, now a graphic designer, was always drawing as they grew up, and Perkins would copy her drawings, much to her sister’s annoyance. They both ended up studying at Indiana University’s Herron School of Art & Design in Indianapolis, and Perkins was heading toward a career teaching art before discovering art museums and galleries.
She describes her art practice as being an “inconsistently avid artist” where she will be immersed in a medium for a brief period before moving on to something else. That’s why her current method of gel-plate printing suits her perfectly.
The process involves creating an image using acrylic paint on a gelatinous plate in layers, with the front of the image created first. Once that dries, more of the image can be added, eventually culminating in a final wet layer that is used to pull the full image off the plate.
“It’s fun, but it also can be very frustrating. Sometimes it doesn’t work out or dry properly, or I get impatient and pull it too soon,” she said. “It can ruin the image, which is the other fun part of it. It’s a monotype, so you only get one shot. If it doesn’t work out, you have to do it all over again or do something different, which is nice for how my brain works.
“I don’t want to spend a lot of time doing it and I have to work through it quickly. It can be an exhilarating process.”
While she focused on painting growing up and moved toward drawing during her undergraduate studies, gel-plate printing has her focus now. Though many people use the medium to create greeting cards or crafts, Perkins aims to elevate the experience and resulting pieces.
“When I first started, I said, ‘I’m going to sit down and try to make something that isn’t crafty,’” she said. “I like to use it as more of a monotype surface. I paint directly on the gel plate and layer from there, so it’s more of an illustrative process.”
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She said she has stacks of stencils she’s created if she needs inspiration, but she’ll also use photographs to generate ideas for works of art.
“I like that it’s a ‘low-brow method’ and that it’s accessible. You can buy a plate at Michael’s and start playing around with it. It’s experimental and doesn’t feel like it has to be that serious,” she said. “I’ve spent a lot of my career working with children, so I like that it’s accessible to children, but it also brings a childlike experience for me that I just get to play and see what happens.”
That’s much of what was behind the McNugget Buddy painting as well. Her father was clearing out a room and came across many of Perkins’ toys from her childhood, and Perkins jumped at the chance to collect them.
She’s painted a couple of the beloved McNugget Buddies she used to play with, and also wants to do paintings of Polly Pockets that she and her sister had growing up.
She’d also like to eventually study and learn lithography and return to ceramics.
It’s been a challenge to find time since she only started at the Stamps Gallery in August, and she and her husband are expecting their first baby in mid-January.
“I can visualize it all, but I just need to have some time to do it when I’m not in the middle of a move, a new job and having a baby,” she said with a laugh.
