and now... SOLON PERRY (Published in INDEX Magazine)
and now... SOLON PERRY (Published in INDEX Magazine)
I am sitting just outside MassArt’s Media and Design Center when Solon Perry arrives–fifteen minutes late. They are, without fail, unmistakable.
It’s no understatement to say no one else in the Boston streets is regularly rocking an eight-point police cap. No one else strolls down Newbury Street in thick camouflage and a fishnet crop-top. And when the police cap is removed, I’d put money on not a single person having deftly shaved their long auburn locks into a patchwork of fringed bangs and disconnected ponytails. And atop it all, Solon wears a cropped white t-shirt emblazoned with a stark anti-industrial design of their own creation.
“Want me to roll you a cigarette?” Perry asks cheerily, “I’m the best in the West… or… East as it were.”
Perry then invites me deeper into MassArt, where we establish ourselves in the school’s enclosed courtyard. This airy quad, populated by a handful of quietly working artists, is a welcome break from the din of the streets, but this was not my original choice of interview location. The night before, I had tracked an elusive Perry to the spot where we first met close to a year ago. Just down the street stands Evan’s Park— location of the guerilla art market, Carcass. This sprawling open-air gallery plays host to a panoply of MassArt student artists, sculptors, and jewellers who would otherwise be unable to sell their art through the publicly funded MassArt avenues.
Perry is a certified regular at Carcass, where they have made a name for themself, selling a series of artfully screen-printed tees. From plain white blanks to dress shirts and denim, Perry’s designs refuse to be constrained, emblazoning even the most unassuming garments with a slew of ever-mordant statements.
“I think t-shirts are a powerful message to shock people,” Perry explains, “I think upsetting people in a way where you are exposing them to some kind of reality about yourself is really important.”
Immediately, Perry’s Friend of Tom design comes to mind: a bright crimson circle adorned with, as it would happen, a similarly police-capped man. Pulling imagery from gay rights protests, Tom of Finland, and the Converse logo, this image pockmarks many of Perry’s own clothes, and I would be lying if I said that I didn’t own a number of these pieces myself.
As they smoke beside me, Perry looks every bit of their influences.
“I think some people are just scared to stand out and speak about,” Perry explains, taking a long drag.
From here, Perry redirects me into MassArt’s student workshops– a labyrinthine series of cubicles and graffiti-marked halls, maculated from generations of young artists before. Perry seems well at home here, gesturing offhandedly to a multitude of their own projects, which sit innocently propped against walls and even grungy restroom tiles. Perry has taken off their converted army coat now, and I can see their screen-printed shirt fully, in all its glory. Emblazed with a grotesquely corporate machine and a pair of descended hands outfitted with tools for dismembering the system, nothing could be more on brand.
Perry is the vanguard cofounder of MassArt’s Garment Printing Club, which now holds the title of MassArt Student Organization of the Year. It is here that they continue to print their own anti-establishment clothing, all while providing a unique service to MassArt and the wider Boston community.
“I try to spend as much time helping other people with projects as I am working on my own,” says Perry.
Perry, alongside longtime friend and cofounder Nate Borges, created the Garment Printing Club in only their freshman year at MassArt. Their thesis was simple: make the notoriously exclusive screenprinting equipment at MassArt more accessible.
“Nate had a fair amount of screenprinting experience, and I had done it a couple of times in high school,” says Perry, “We just needed to sell t-shirts to make money, and through doing that, we were able to create an infrastructure where anyone could email us a design, and we would burn it.”
Despite being granted approval from MassArt’s SGA, the inchoate Garment Printing Club still remained peripatetic well into its current incarnation.
“At first, it was just us doing it wherever we could, with five-gallon buckets of water and printing on the floor,” Perry details, “Then we were doing it in our dorm, and Nate would sneak into the print-making studio. Eventually, we got some space in the Veterans' lounge, and we were doing it legit. Then that fell through, and we were back in the dorm during our sophomore year.”
While operating a student organisation out of an on-campus Artist Residency appears ripe for bureaucratic shutdown, this was surprisingly when Perry’s Garment Printing Club fully took off. Keeping their clandestine operation hush-hush, Perry delivered students of MassArt the invaluable experience of creating their own clothing and, more importantly, providing a means to monetise their own art.
“Nate and I are about helping people in a way that very much disregards the system,” says Perry, “Succeeding as an artist is activism, too. Not just getting an office job and participating in the system is still radical.”
Perry and I have been seated in their shared studio for the brunt of our conversation, and it is here that an ongoing carousel of artists moves throughout the space around us. Unfailingly, Perry is friendly with every single person that passes. On one such occasion, they offer eager assistance to a handful of artists looking for one-inch screws, warmly accepting a thermos cap of stolen coffee in return. Time and again, it is evident that Perry adores their community and truly understands the value of fostering systems of communal support.
Enter Solon Perry’s newest project, Bike Club.
It should be noted that this both is and isn’t a misnomer. Perry’s recent work has included the creation of a new club at MassArt aimed at “Exchanging mutual aid and community service for bike repair.”
“As college students, we have access to all of this equipment, media distribution tools, and cameras and all of this shit,” Perry explains, “People need to be getting their research done and use all of their free time and access to…well… change the world.”
In this vein, Bike Club has continued to provide aid and assistance throughout much of the prior school year’s student demonstrations for Palestine. True to their raison d’etre, Bike Club offered a free bike to any student activist arrested in the joint police takedown of the MassArt and Northeastern encampment. Invariably, Perry’s every project appears aimed towards generating a positive chain of community outreach.
“Even in my sculptural work right now, I was doing all this work in paper mache, and I was trying to make this installation of a guerilla activist’s bedroom,” Perry says, “But I feel like since knowing the outcome of the election, it has shifted completely.”
Recently, Perry has aimed their artistic exploits at the creation of numerous riot-gear-inspired sculptures. They then take me on an extensive tour of their own studio space, wherein I am introduced to a life-size paper mache police shield, as well as a mache’d megaphone and a seventy-pound, plexiglass chest plate.
Triumphantly, Perry declares, “It stopped a shotgun slug and a shot from a 9 millimetre.”
Witty as ever, Perry has painted “Not for use in combat” upon the back of this artwork.
“I very much believe in having some kind of protection within queer communities,” Perry explains, “I imagine lots of students will be protesting in the coming months… and there just isn’t an urgency for the necessary protection we need.”
Perry’s position as a community leader is not lost on them by any means. The gravity of a recent election and the distinct need for student leadership hangs poignantly over everything they endeavour to accomplish in their time at MassArt.
“Whether you’re making zines about how to steal HRT or explaining the best way to keep birth control from expiring, it’s about using your tools as an artist to disseminate that information,” says Perry.
Solon Perry, clad in bottle cap pins, gauzy scarves, and every other sprezzaturan accessory, is the picture of a new-age revolutionary. Simultaneously engaged in artistic expression, community service, and sartorial protest, one would be hard-pressed to find another Boston creative doing it quite like Perry.
Perry straightens somewhat as we end our conversation, stating under no uncertain terms, “What matters to me now is maintaining these connections that I’ve made. Because I know we’re all willing to work together to protect ourselves and to create a real lasting change in this world.”