Meet the Artist Behind Home of the Happy's Cover
A world of ancestral connections, giant blue skies, and landscapes imbued with culture—as seen through the eyes of Olivia Perillo
If you’ve seen the cover of Home of the Happy . . .
. . . there, now you’ve seen it—you’ve seen the work of one of my favorite Acadiana artists.
Olivia Perillo, who photographed this wondrously swampy backdrop for the book, has been working as a professional photographer and artist in Acadiana for over a decade. I first discovered her work in 2020 when writer Lauren Heffker wrote a feature story for Country Roads magazine on her remarkable documentary Intention, for which she and her creative partner Syd Horn followed the stories of eleven women holding, with care, a particular piece of Louisiana’s cultural heritage.
(Fun fact: Olivia is also the daughter of beloved Acadiana weatherman, Rob Perillo.)
Come back to watch Olivia and Syd Horn’s 1-hour documentary Intention, here.
Since then, I’ve had the great pleasure of collaborating with Olivia on many occasions for stories at Country Roads. (One of my all-time favorites is this history of the Holiday Lounge in Mamou, for which Olivia’s photos captured all of the mythic old bar’s mystery and intrigue.) There’s a quality, a depth, to her photos and her filmwork that I’m drawn to—the colors and the angles and the shadows. They feel familiar to me. They feel like home, in a way it’s never been effectively captured before.
I knew, as soon as I started to develop a visual component for my book, that I wanted her to be a part of it.
Besides the cover, back in 2022 I brought Olivia out to Evangeline Parish one evening to capture my world. We drove out to the Bayou Nezpique, where Aubrey LaHaye’s body was found. We visited the graveyard where he now lies, and looked out at the rice dryers he built. Olivia came with me to LaHaye Road, to capture the land of my childhood, my family, my ancestors. The results—rice field vistas, dark mysterious waters, portraits of my family in the place where they were wrought—will forever be treasures to me. And many of them will be published inside the book itself.
Olivia also made something just for me, though. A collage artist as well as a photographer and filmmaker—she has long used her craft as a way to explore her own family history. Layering the landscape of her ancestors with archival photographs of them, disjointed memories coming together in an effort to understand—she has described the work as an act of healing. It’s something that has always felt so akin to my own project, a laying of the past over the present, seeking to understand, healing old wounds.
“In getting to know my past family members and learning their stories, it has led to insight on innate vulnerabilities and inherent traumas in my present life—it’s ultimately a practice on healing myself.” —Olivia Perillo
With the photographs she’d captured for me, as well as some from my own family archives, she created for me a custom work that holds within it the tensions of my family’s story. The spaces and places and mysteries and miseries, as well as the beauty and the love, at the heart of Home of the Happy. And I couldn’t be more grateful, or excited to share it:
Introductions aside, I wanted to give Olivia the opportunity to share her journey and perspectives as an artist with you—this intimate group of readers so drawn to the lore of ancestry, the mysteries of the past, the wonder of Acadiana.
Readers, meet Olivia.
Jordan: Let’s start at the beginning. Where did your journey as a documentary photographer and filmmaker start?
Olivia: I was always interested in visual art growing up, and I loved discovering very early on how photography could stop time and preserve memory, while offering a connection to the past.
I was probably thirteen when I started photographing my mom’s small hometown on the border of Mexico in far West Texas. Being in that environment nearly every summer, and often in the winter, inspired me to document this other homeland I felt a deep connection to, while recognizing similarities and differences in cultural patterns between there and the South Louisiana culture I was born into.
Filmmaking naturally fell into my lap as an alternate and extra-sensory mode of storytelling for me. I made some films in high school for assignments but it wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I started seriously dipping my toes into documentary film, which led to the creation of my first short film with my creative partner, Syd Horn, and eventually a production company we started together called Honest Art.
Jordan: Across your body of work, there is a captivating interaction between landscape and ancestry, place and people. Can you speak a little about those themes and what they mean to you as an artist?
Olivia: We’re all a product of our chosen environments; where and who we come from has an influence on our lives and our identities.
For me, documenting the land of my ancestors connects me to them, which in turn connects me to myself, being biologically attached to them and learning as much as I can of their lives and lifestyles. Exploring identity through the interconnectedness of place and people has been really empowering within my art across mediums, and I’m really grateful to have such diversity in my upbringing, primarily between the swamp and desert—it’s been a really beautiful perspective to hold.
Jordan: You’ve described your work as archiving, as holding onto your family’s stories, and as healing across generations. Can you walk us through your process of creating a work that does this? Capturing a particular landscape, and then drawing your family’s history out of it through collage and photography?
Olivia: I think spending time in my family’s archive, as small as it is, has been a really important practice when talking about generational healing.
In getting to know my past family members and learning their stories, it has led to insight on innate vulnerabilities and inherent traumas in my present life—it’s ultimately a practice on healing myself.
Honoring those who came before in this way is an energetic exchange that I think is felt forward and backward in time. I was already photographing the landscapes of my ancestors for my own love of place, change, and memory of the land itself. And it felt like a natural evolution to juxtapose my family’s photos, to bridge the past and present through my contemporary lens. My collage work generally has a surrealist aspect to it, and can be a bit romanticized, lending to alternate storylines that are certainly historical, though simultaneously fictional.
Jordan: Your work extends beyond your own family into your community, into explorations of healing, celebrations of culture, and documentation of social justice movements. Where does Acadiana, as an expression of community, find its place in your practice?
Olivia: I think being from Acadiana has greatly influenced my sense of identity and interest in exploring cultural traditions here, as well as documenting the past and present evolutions of what that means.
Growing up heavily influenced by music and food in my household was easily interconnected with the beauty of community here, and those values have held true throughout my life. We have some of the most loving, caring people here in our community, and that’s been important to recognize as an example of a potential future with social and environmental justice for the collective, despite complicated histories.
Jordan: Your photography and filmwork has a very particular quality to it, a signature treatment to light and color. I’ve always found it leant a depth and intrigue to our landscapes that feels very true. Where is this aesthetic drawn from?
Olivia: Thank you! My stylistic choices with light, color, and composition are implemented as I remember them, through a rose-colored lens. The darkness that I love to shoot in gives such a softness to a subject that highlights them in a serene way, and I love thinking about it as a metaphor for standing amongst the shadow self.
Jordan: The photo used on the cover of Home of the Happy is of Lake Martin in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, a place you have photographed often. What about that particular Louisiana landscape—the swamp—keeps calling you back?
Olivia: I absolutely love the swamp—it is truly alive throughout all times of day and each season, while always changing, and that in itself has been a beautiful place of solace and reflection for me over the years. It’s also served me well as a backdrop for so many collaborations as a strong sense of place, and been a sweet holding space for good walks and visits with my people.
Jordan: Who are some other Louisiana artists that inspire you?
Olivia: Oh so many … first names off the top of my head lately : Dege Legg, Lynda Frese, Syd Horn, Gabrielle Garcia Steib, Virginia Hanusik, Rush Jagoe, Thomas Deaton, Roz LeCompte, Francis X Pavy, Marshall Belvins, Elizabeth McNabb, Dickie Landry.
Watch the late Dege Legg’s music video for “The Devil You Know,” shot by Olivia through her and Syd Horn’s production company Honest Art.
Jordan: Anything on the horizon that people should be on the look out for?
Olivia: Yes—other than the release of Home of the Happy (which I am so thrilled about!)—I am selling prints of my photographs on metal that have been beautiful objects to create; I’m just finishing working on my backlog of photographs over the last few years and have curated my website accordingly, so I’m excited to release my new portfolio. I’m also looking forward to releasing a new music video for Julie Odell that is currently in post-production (directed by Tif Lamson), as well as Traitement, a documentary on healing with Becca Begnaud, a traiteur from Scott, Louisiana.
Watch the trailer for Olivia and Syd Horn’s forthcoming documentary Traitement, here.
Explore more of Olivia’s work at oliviaperillo.com.