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This is one of my more obscure works.
I am not good at taking images of people. I still believe, I am stealing something from them, particularly if they are not aware of the image being taken. And if they know, I am always in a hurry. When I go out to take images I usually come home with a good collection of tree photos. They have a soul as well, but they stand still.
This character was originally called Vanity, but I have renamed her Socialite.
In conversation, she is the one constantly looking around to see whether there is a more important person in sight. If somebody shows up on the horizon, she drops you like a hot potato. On the other hand, she is very worried about what other people might think of her. As an indication of this trait the back of her head shows other people’s faces.
Working on this puppet, and of course thinking of the upcoming book launch, I had an epiphany about what irks me with “social networks”. It is the terminology… For me social networks it is a contradiction in terms.
Network has a very strong business connotation. This might be my second language interpretation here, but any marketing 101 book tells you, you must network to be successful. I went to a business network meeting once, to see what it is all about. In my opinion it was the saddest affair I have ever been to. The people had their intentions plastered all over their foreheads and yes, fair enough, that was the purpose of the meeting. But I found it tremendously off-putting.
Therefore I resist using the word “network” in relation to my friends. In my opinion it excludes altruism, which I consider necessary for relaxed interaction between people.
I’ve got these little Easter bunnies this morning. I just couldn’t resist…
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I had a character in mind, when I created this dede. But when I discussed the puppet with a friend, we couldn’t even agree whether it is a male or a female character, so I thought it might be a nice idea to ask the readers who this should become and what traits the character should have.
There is no hint as to who it might be. The skin is quite colourful and maybe it has a bearing that the head is a fraction bigger than all the other puppets.
Any suggestions?
This was the first of my postcard series I did 5 years ago. The photograph of the wall of a partially demolished house triggered that project then. Postcards are pretty much a dying breed.
Thinking about it now, it is not too dissimilar to writing a blog. I sent one postcard every week and had to come up with an idea, print it and find some words to go with it. A bit of a slower pace though.
Devil is into Detail
Got a bit side tracked lately – back to the Dedes.
There are a couple of puppets missing on the Cast page. Detail is one of them. I want to make good for this ommission now.
Hermit’s other friends pretend to love Detail, but be aware…. she is a difficult one. If you don’t pay her enough attention, it will be very obvious to the entire world. You of course, my friend, will be the last one to find out.
The other trait I dislike about Detail is her hunger for more and more information before she can make up her mind. Can she ever decide? She never seems to get all her facts together. Maybe Procrastinator would be her dream partner (but I haven’t started working on him yet).
She is of course a fantastic worker. Give her a job, and she will finish it brilliantly.
These are my mother’s ornamented Easter eggs. They have tradition in the part of Germany where she grew up. An area close to the Polish border in the Eastern part of the country… therefore very inaccessible before the Wall came down, and now very inaccessible for me, as I live on the other side of the world.
I have never seen Easter eggs as beautiful as these. Last year I finally had the chance to photograph them. For me they are laden with stories and emotions about a quiescent, but scary country.
Some people are still keeping up the tradition. I found this page about the craft of the Easter Eggs.
A good friend of mine gave me this minature bottle as a prop for the puppet show at the book launch. Pig likes it’s tipple – now that sounds like an old lady, I should say it like it is – Pig likes to booze!
It is quite funny, my friend is a New Zealander, but she bought this bottle a good thirty, fourty years ago on her OE. And it says on the side of the bottle Produce of Germany. She bought it at a time when I didn’t even know New Zealand existed. The alcohol has long evaporated out of the bottle through the unbroken seal. When we talked about the puppet show she immediately thought of the bottle as the right prop for Pig and digged it out. I wonder what kind of memories she has, when she looks at the bottle.
It is amazing what people keep as mementos. I have a box full “useless” stuff. I started to photograph the items, as each of them conjures up lost friends and time past. I am not lamenting the loss by any means, I just know that every person along my tracks has added to who I am now.
That is what I really wanted to say yesterday about the hammer: we look at the same thing, but we interpret it differently depending on our previous experiences. For me that is the reason why people can never see things quite the same way.
Art contemplation is a little bit like a hammer. We know what it is, but what we make of it depends on how we use it. Destroy or create!
Two people look at the same image and can have a totally different experience.
I just bumped into Amanda, who I only met recently, when I picked up my book launch invites from the printers. Turns out she is a fellow blogger. Her blog is about things made from paper called Love Notes. She told me she has written about the puppets and the Hermit’s Web book. Of course I had to check it out immediately and gosh it sounds really exciting!
This morning I’ve got round to photographing Devil’s Advocate. He looks very mellow and relaxed.
Like all my other work, the puppets are multi-layered, but what I particularly like about them is their interactivity. I love to watch people engage with the puppets. Let somebody get their hands on a puppet and they start acting with them. The least they do is wave… and this is a very friendly gesture, isn’t it? You don’t really need many words, but I can observe their reaction to my artwork, rather than just assuming their perception of it. I love that.
dedepuppets 