{By: Tim HigginsSpecial to The Morning Call}

For 30 years, the Mayfair Festival of the Arts in Allentown has showcased a wide variety of Lehigh Valley arts, especially the visual artists. But painters, printmakers and sculptors also have come from far and wide.
Sculptor Eugene Perry was born in Monrovia, Liberia, but came to the U.S. in 1986 when he was 10, following his father, who came to get an education and then sent for his family. Perry worked as a commercial structural steel fabricator for most of his life. During his free time, he began using leftover scrap metal to make sculptures.
“I was just messing around,” he says. “It was a hobby at first, but people began telling me how much they liked it.”
Perry was let go from his job one day but, he says, he wasn’t all that worried. His hobby already had paid off in several commissions and he was ready to take on the life of an artist. READ MORE OF THIS STORY