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It all began with rats.
By LORELEI LAIRD
Special to The Leader
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About six years ago, J. Leigh Pearson was a graduate student in art education taking her first sculpture class. Required to sculpt an animal, she chose a rat, whimsically posing it as if falling from the edge of a table. When it caught the eye of a local gallery, she was surprised. When she started getting phone calls from people offering to buy it, "it just blew my mind: who'd want a rat"? Nonetheless, she set up a mold and started producing rats. Then a friend who'd moved to New York sent her information about a pet store that was looking for more animal sculptures. Thus Happy Rat Studios was born. These days, she lives in Round Rock and sculpts out of her home for special-order and wholesale clients, surrounded by a husband, four dogs, one cat, and lots of smaller, more ceramic companions, including a set of falling rats.
It is an especially happy ending because sculpting is Pearson's second career. She was once co-director of an advertising agency in Providence, Rhode Island, but, as she says, "I was at the point in advertising where I didn't want to get out of bed in the morning." Further spurred by her divorce from her first husband, she decided it was time for a change. So she abandoned advertising in favor of graduate school, intending to become an art teacher. Because she had been a design major as an undergraduate, she was required to take a sculpture class and she "just fell in love with it."
After her initial success with the rats, Pearson set up shop and started looking for more clients. Her former co-director from the ad agency had recently moved to New York, and about six months after Pearson had started the studio, her friend sent a clipping from the New York times about a famous animal gift shop named Mabel's, suggesting that she send a sample of her work to the store. "I had only been doing this for six months," said Pearson, but nonetheless, she sent down some slides of her work. The response was scanty and curt until she sent down another sample a sculpture of the owner's cat, Mabel, the namesake of the shop. Very soon afterward, she got a phone call: "How soon can you be in New York?"
"It all sort of grew on its own," said Pearson. "We did enough business in the first year to support the studio. Once I got out of school, I had time to promote elsewhere."
Elsewhere turned out to be mostly in New York, where she established a relationship with Mabel's, listed herself with various wholesalers online and in print, and pursued her hobby, amateur figure skating. It was through skating, at a New Jersey get-together for adult ice dancers, that she met her second husband, Chuck. It was he who brought Pearson to Round Rock, where she works out of the garage and shows her work at places like Artisans at the Arboretum, in addition to skating a few nights a week. The couple have since become adult couples figure skating champions, and they teach skating in their spare time.
So why animal sculptures? Why not people or traffic lights or abstract squiggles?
"I sculpted animals as a kid," said Pearson, "so it was really coming back to something, totally unintentionally." She says she's always loved dogs, and they're her favorites, but she does a wide variety of animals, lots of cats, exotic birds, piggy banks, a few cows, and lizard-motif plates "inspired by those little lizards around here: I'd love to do something more with those."
The sculpture is usually functional, with the animals in supporting roles: cat-handled coffee mugs, canine salt and pepper shakers, and pieces like her portrait of one of her own dogs, which supports a glass-topped table in her living room.
Working creatively out of your own home may sound like a dream come true, but Pearson reports that being self-employed has its good points and its bad points.
"It's nice to set your own hours, but most people go home at 5 or 6 p.m., and I'll be working until 2 a.m.," especially during the holiday season, when the gift orders come pouring in. "I think anyone who's self-employed works harder than [nine-to-five] people." And though working out of her garage gives her a great commute, she's still looking around for affordable studio space, because the size of her work area limits the amount of work she can do.
Though Pearson doesn't regret her mid-stream career change, she readily admits that it was a scary thing to do.
"Hah! To be in a position where you have no idea what you're doing?" But with graduate school, she said, "at least you've got somewhere to be in the meantime... [I needed to] spend some time to explore, and grad school is a wonderful place to do that."
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