The Artisan’s Way

Inside the universe of sculptor Jonas Perkins

“I moved here with a tent and only a wheelbarrow and some cement,” Perkins said.

Perkins hails from the Chicago area. His father was a Pullman porter, and his mother cleaned at a mental institution. They sent him to a Catholic school to get a good education, but he wasn’t Catholic, and he was also the only Black kid. His status as an outsider, both at school and in his neighborhood, propelled him to make art that draws people inside his creative spirit.

“Inside is outside. Outside is inside,” Perkins said. “Art has a way of moving around people that talkin’ by itself don’t get at.”

He said, Charlie, thirty years went by way too fast, it seemed. / I just chased an artisan’s dream / And I said, Jonas, that’s just the artisan’s way. – song by Charlie Kelley, for Jonas Perkins

Imagine if an artist exuded his craft in every aspect of his life: his demeanor, his domicile, and yes, in his artwork. Fredericksburg has such an artist, a man who lives near the bat cave. He is the internationally known sculptor and mosaic artist Jonas Perkins.

An artist and an artisan are different — one makes fine art, and one makes fine craft. Perkins makes both. He can turn clay into bronze. He can build a house out of abandoned wine bottles, satellite dishes and Aircrete. He can inspire a song.

His mother believed in him from an early age, telling him, “God’s got a plan for you, son,” Perkins recalled. She also taught ceramics and gave him clay to play with. Even as a child he could make clay look like actual, recognizable people. He still doesn’t sketch before he starts to sculpt. He simply sees an image and follows it.

“When you do a sculpture, you visualize. It’s my perception of what I see.” he said. “What you’re doing as a sculptor is a collective of many aspects of a person.”

He has sculpted numerous historical figures — George Washington Carver, Governor Bill Clements, Frederick Douglass, Quanah Parker, Gordon Parks, Rosa Parks, Harold Washington, Carl Solms-Braunfels (and his German castle). He’s currently working on a sculpture of Jim Collums and his windmills for the Longhorn Museum in Pleasanton. Perkins’ work can be found in hospitals, libraries, museums, parks and in private collections.

After a trip to Windsor Castle, he was inspired to make a bronze from a 6-foot-tall painting of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.

“She didn’t have her royal trappings on, just a real man and a real woman,” Perkins said, adding, “I have an emotional attachment to the queen.”

He’s sculpted every U.S. president, going back to John F. Kennedy.

“I sent Nixon his statue on the day of Watergate,” Perkins said. “I did one for the Gipper.”

Perkins earned admission to the Art Institute of Chicago with a sculpture of a woman titled “Princess Queen,” carved from black walnut using a screwdriver and broken glass. He only stayed two years — the artistic style was too abstract for Perkins’ taste. So he hopped on a train and headed to Mexico and Instituto Allende visual arts school. Afterward he went back to working on the railroad as a brakeman, where he received some sage advice from a friend who was not an artist.

“He said, ‘Perky, you need to do presidents or generals — someone they know and recognize,’” Perkins said. And so he did. But the recognizable person who put him on the map was Pope John Paul II.

Henry Cisneros was mayor of San Antonio when the pope visited in 1987. Cisneros knew Perkins and knew he was working on something. Word got around, and Perkins was summoned to Westover Hills, where the outdoor mass was to take place.

“At 3 a.m., some guy called and said, ‘The pope wants to see the statue.’ I had to stand in between these two National Guards guys while the pope drove by in his popemobile. The guy behind me had a gun, so it was like, ‘Don’t move,’” Perkins said.

Perkins stayed still, but that statue moved the world for him. Commissions, both public and private, followed and have not stopped.

In addition to sculpture, Perkins also makes mosaics. He’s recreated the 9/11 firefighters, Buffalo Soldiers, President Obama’s “Yes We Can,” the San Antonio Spurs icon and his own family.

“I got hurt and was laid up in the bed. The only thing I could do was lay there and break that tile,” Perkins said.

He’s also done a mosaic of Frank Sinatra.

“Sinatra would give my dad a $100 tip, ‘to get the kids new shoes,’” Perkins said. “I won’t sell that one.”

He has even combined sculpture with mosaic in the Great Benini Luminary, honoring Benini, the Italian-turnedTexan painter and assemblage artist.

Perkins’ studio, which he built beside his house, includes spiral mosaics in the flooring made from a local granite quarry’s cast-offs. He built his own foundry after taking a class at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio.

Perkins boils the whole sculpting process down to one simple direction: “I can melt something and make it look like somebody,” he said.

Every piece of art he makes affects him. His Korean War memorial “Night Watch,” installed outside the San Antonio Municipal Auditorium, was sponsored by C Company, 20th Infantry Battalion, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Reserve. It features two men in a foxhole, back to back, two men who “couldn’t share a tortilla together back in Texas,” Perkins said, and then walked away for a moment to collect himself. He came back with tears in his eyes.

The universe Perkins dwells in is a kind and generous place, filled with unexpected meetings, like when his truck broke down near the house of legendary architect O’Neil Ford. That mishap led to a series of friendships and artistic partnerships.

Or there was the time he ran into Hondo Crouch (aka Mr. Luckenbach) at what Perkins called “the back 40” of the UTSA Texan Cultures Institute, where Perkins had a woodworking booth. Crouch invited him to come to Fredericksburg and check out its art scene. While attending a parade, Perkins noticed a Black man on a float, standing and waving. He decided it couldn’t be that bad of a town, even though “There hadn’t been a guy who looked like me to move here in 100 years,” he said.

Spending time with a person’s likeness and bringing them to life creates a deep bond between Perkins and his subjects. His gentle demeanor and talent draw people to him as friends, and sometimes those friends become enshrined in art, including Hondo’s wife Schatzie Crouch, who Perkins called “the Queen Mom of Fredericksburg.”

“She was the most human, human.” he said. “When I moved here, she was nice to me.”

Perkins also influenced Charlie Kelley, an occasional leader of Luckenbach Pickers Circle. After he assisted Perkins on a bronze of José Antonio Navarro, Kelley said Perkins asked him, “Why don’t you write a song about what I do?” and so he did. “The Artisan’s Way” begins “He came out of Chicago on a southbound wind.”

That wind blows Perkins wherever he needs to go, shows him whoever he needs to talk to and whatever piece of art or craft he needs to work on in any given moment.

“People like to try to catch you,” Perkins said.

But it’s impossible to catch him. You might as well try to catch the wind.