Katie Perkins started playing with fire when she was 15 years old. Her art instructor at the Chickasaw Summer Arts Academy (CSAA) introduced the students to woodburning, and Perkins was instantly drawn to it like a proverbial moth to a flame.
“My friends were like, ‘This is really hard,’ and I was like, ‘It’s really hard, but it’s really satisfying. I like this,’” Perkins said.
Years later, that introduction to pyrography has developed into an art form Perkins will showcase Oct. 2-3 during the Southeastern Art Show and Market (SEASAM) in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. This year will mark her third time participating in SEASAM as an adult artist.
Since childhood, Perkins has been drawn to art. She started with pencil and paper but did not learn to paint until she attended CSAA at 14 years old. This year, she returned to CSAA as a teaching assistant for painting classes.
One of 14 children, Perkins said her family could not afford art lessons for her. She said she is grateful for the opportunities the Chickasaw Nation provides, like CSAA, and she was honored to give back to a program that helped shape her creative life.
While the CSAA painting classes were instrumental to Perkins’ artistic journey, woodburning fired her up in a new kind of way. Pyrography — the art of creating designs by burning a surface with a heated tool — became part of her artistic life at 15. Her interest intensified around five years ago when her husband gave her a Razertip SK Pyrography Burner.
Her previous burner was big and clunky with only one heat setting. The new tool allowed her to adjust the temperature and line quality as well as add shading. This expanded her artistic range, and she started burning hats and making portraits.
Perkins creates her work freehand and enjoys experimenting with different materials because each responds differently to heat. She said regular felt burns black while black felt turns a coppery rose gold. Although she expected authentic suede and leather to burn the best, she said she has discovered vegan suede allows her to create more detail and build layers. Of all the different types of wood, basswood is her favorite because she can sand it down to be as smooth as a piece of paper.
Perkins is far from finished experimenting. She said she hopes to one day work with bones, having a dream to burn Chickasaw designs into a longhorn skull.
She also incorporates other media into her work and is currently creating a large-scale piece combining pyrography, painting and resin.
Pyrography comes with many challenges, including burns. Just as a painter will occasionally drop their paintbrush, Perkins has dropped her wood burner and has had to fight the reflex to grab it by the hot tip. She said she has burned her hair, knee and fingers, but it hasn’t stopped her from creating with intense heat — she just keeps water close by.
The unforgiving nature of the medium presents another challenge. Perkins describes herself as a “recovering perfectionist.” She said she realized she could not focus on perfection amid the demands of pyrography, where there is no room to fully undo a mistake. Unlike pencil, a burned line cannot be erased, and unlike paint, it cannot be covered with another layer — though Perkins has incorporated paint into her pieces as a response to an accident or mistake.
She said the challenges of pyrography actually enhance her creativity and help her to put aside the notion that everything has to be perfect.
“I used to get so disappointed with myself whenever I would make a mistake. It would ruin the whole process and take all the fun out of it,” Perkins said. “But now if I mess up, I can either try to fix it — get really creative with that — or move on to the next thing and take it as a part of the learning process. Because as an artist, I’m never going to stop learning new things.
“Especially with free handing the hats, I just have to go for it and trust my gut and my creative process and know that I will be able to fix whatever is thrown at me.”
Perkins said she loves creating and sharing her art with others. She adores breathing life into a design and sharing it with other people, letting them experience that joy. In fact, the idea of “joy” is central to her work. Her business name is Pure Joy Artistry, which comes from the meaning of her name. Katie means “pure” and her middle name is “Joy.”
“God made me to create, and I love being able to use the gifts he gave me for his glory and to spread joy and share it with the world,” Perkins said.
SEASAM will take place Oct. 2 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Oct. 3 from 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Chickasaw Nation Historic Capitol Building grounds.
More of Perkins’ work can be found on Instagram at Pure_Joy_Artistry and on Facebook at Katie Joy Perkins.