Carol Peligian, born to Armenian parents in 1954, in Providence, Rhode Island, remembers that as a child she lived to draw, loving the pure pleasure of creating an image. She became an artist. But in 1983, when a huge flood destroyed 3,000 of her works, she left art and made her living in design. In 1992, Peligian returned to art making, but with deeper confidence and purpose. She embraced mediums from drawing and painting to sculpture and installations, following her impulses—as when she decided to “coat” a ladder in her mother’s (cut up) mink. This episode of The Artists Profile Archive focuses on Peligian and her recent work, including the sculpture Susurrus, an homage to victims of genocide. “I think art reminds us that we’re human,” she says. “And I think there’s just something intensely pleasurable about coming upon it, it’s a reminder that we’re all in this thing, this thing called life, together.” —L.J.