A few visits to The Louvre Museum in Paris were all it took to transform young Joseph Perrin from engineer to artist.
Prior to being called to fight in World War II in 1943, Perrin had been studying aeronautical engineering at Georgia Tech. But after recovering from injuries such as a broken back and frost bite that nearly cost him his legs, he was reassigned to Paris to design airfields for the U.S. Army Air Forces.
While there, the City of Light exposed him to the artsy side of life, and he was never again interested in engineering, said his daughter, Jane Perrin Layfield, of Hoschton.
“He always told me he just kept going to the museums and knew he was meant to be an artist,” she said. “Then he came home and pursued it.”
Perrin never returned to Georgia Tech after coming home in 1946. Instead he enrolled at the High Museum School of Art, the Ringling College of Art and Design and The University of Georgia, from which he graduated with a fine arts degree in 1950 and headed into the field with full force and dedication, his daughter said.
“He always said success came from 10 percent talent and 90 percent hard work,” she said. “And he lived that out.”
Joseph Samuel Perrin, of Lawrenceville, died April 4 from complications following a brief illness at The Bridge at Lawrenceville assisted living facility. He was 90.
His funeral is scheduled for 3 p.m. Sunday at the Gwinnett Chapel of Wages & Sons Funeral Home & Crematories, which is also in charge of the arrangements. Interment will immediately follow at Melwood Cemetery in Stone Mountain.
Perrin’s first step into his art career was as an art professor at the University of New Hampshire. He moved back to Georgia in 1953 with the hopes of bringing art culture to the growing city of Atlanta, Layfield said.
“If Atlanta was going to be a metropolitan city, he believed the arts had to be a part of it,” she said. “He was really dedicated to making Atlanta a center of art for the Southeast.”
Perrin also believed Atlanta needed a public art school or university, so beginning with only a few professors, he established the School of Art and Design at Georgia State University, where he taught and played a key role in transforming it into the nationally respected program it is today.
Today, Perrin’s personal artwork — mainly paintings — can be found in the permanent collections of the High Museum of Art, The Coca-Cola Collection, The Carter Presidential Center and several others. He received several awards for his work, including the Governor’s Arts Award in 1974.
Perrin painted everything from landscapes to abstracts during his career. He was also seen as an important figure in the Atlanta art society for his work as chairman of the MARTA arts council, president of the Atlanta Arts Festival and his contributions to the original Underground Atlanta.
Perrin retired in the early 1980s when tremors made it nearly impossible for him to paint. By then his artwork, contributions and dedication made enormous differences in the growth of the arts in Atlanta, said Betty Foy Sanders, a longtime friend and former first lady of Georgia.
“He was a very disciplined artist and dedicated to his work,” she said. “Everybody leaves their mark one way or another. He definitely made his contribution.”
In addition to his daughter Jane, Perrin is survived by another daughter, Josie Perrin Holdaway of Lawrenceville; one sister, Rosemary Harrison of Lawrenceville; five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
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