Contact: Winona Vaitekunas
814-459-5477; [email protected]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 11, 2017, Erie, Pennsylvania – The exhibition ANCIENT INK by photographer Mark
Perrott opens June 23, 2017 and will be on exhibit in the Erie Art Museum’s Bacon Gallery
through January 28, 2018.
Mark Perrott has spent decades documenting the ever-expanding tribe of tattooed Americans. He
made his first portraits at Island Avenue Tattoo in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1979, and since
then has explored tattoo parlors all across America. In his current series, ANCIENT INK, Perrott
turns his camera to the now increasing tribe of highly decorated, aging, and graying baby
boomers. Through large scale (50”x50”) photographs and accompanying interviews, Perrott
introduces the viewer to dozens of individuals, including Brian, a retired steelworker and “ink
addict” from the 1970s; Marge, a 74 year-old former Cleveland police officer; and Henry, an 87
year-old WWII era Navy veteran. “These subjects,” Perrott says, “speak of resilience, loss,
transformation, mystery, and the emancipation that sometimes comes with growing old.”
Pittsburgh native Mark Perrott has worked as a professional photographer for fifty years, and as
an adjunct instructor in photography at Carnegie Mellon University for the past twenty years. In
addition to his commercial work, which includes portraiture and photography for annual reports,
Perrott has spent his life making photographs that document Pittsburgh’s citizens and its rich
industrial landscape. In the early 1980s, he gave special attention to the life and death struggle of
steel in Pittsburgh’s Monongahela Valley, with a special focus on the Jones & Laughlin steel
mill and its Blast Furnace Department, informally known as “Eliza.” Photographs from this
project were used to create the book ELIZA, published in 1989 by Howell Press. In 1999 he
published HOPE ABANDONED, a four-year investigation of Eastern State Penitentiary, located
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2013 he published his third book, E BLOCK, an extended photo
essay on Pittsburgh’s Western Penitentiary, highlighting the staggering statistics of incarceration
in America. Perrott’s photographs are included in numerous museum collections, including the
Carnegie Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, The Westmoreland Museum of American Art,
and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Images available at this link:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxujczcjBP4eVWozbEo2WGpjRXM
About the Erie Art Museum:
The Erie Art Museum anchors downtown Erie’s cultural and economic revitalization, occupying
a group of restored mid-19 century commercial buildings tied together by a modern, ‘green,’
10,500 square foot expansion. The new facility was the first LEED Gold certified building in
Northwest Pennsylvania.
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The Museum maintains an ambitious program of changing exhibitions annually, embracing a
wide range of subjects, both historical and contemporary and including folk art, contemporary
craft, multi-disciplinary installations, community-based work, as well as traditional media.
The Erie Art Museum also holds a collection of over 8,000 objects, which includes significant
works in American ceramics, Tibetan painting, Indian bronzes, contemporary baskets, and a
variety of other categories.
The Museum offers a wide range of education programs and artists’ services including
interdisciplinary and interactive school tours and a wide variety of classes for the
community. Performing arts are showcased in the popular summer program, Mid Day Art
Break, which presents a wide range of regional performers, and the popular annual two-day Erie
Art Museum Blues & Jazz Festival, which presents outstanding national and international artists.
The Erie Art Museum and gift shop is open Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday
11 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday, 1-5 p.m. Winter hours for the Museum’s Wave Café are 10 a.m. –
2:00 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. For additional visitor information, visit online at
www.erieartmuseum.org or call 814-459-5477.
Links:
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