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Red carpet event

August 28, 2014 //
4

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This week is probably the busiest week I will have all year. It started off on Monday with finishing one puppet workshop. I had done a six week course at Toi Ora, an art trust that works in the mental health sector. This is definitely the area I want to move into. Unfortunately the course didn’t quite work as I envisaged it. I liked the students and the settings, but there were also areas that weren’t sitting right, though I think my blog isn’t the forum to divulge what didn’t work. In the course the participants made their own characters and came up with the story and we celebrated the uplaod of our little film with a red carpet event. It’s a very short film, so we only had a very little red carpet.

And here  is the film

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Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, film, Fun, Life, Stop Motion, workshop

How to become an artist?

August 25, 2014 //
2

chech witch

The picture today shows a hand-crafted czech witch, which is on display at the Festival. I have my eyes on her as I see myself in her, but I can’t afford the little cutey. Pity.

This week I will give two talks. One at the gallery about “puppets in today’s world” and the other at school about my artwork. I prepared both talks on Saturday, writing down minutely what I want to say. though I know very well its impossible for me to stick to a script.  As usual I will digress on the day. On the slightest cue from the audience I am off in a tangent. Though I find writing down speeches a brilliant exercise to focus on what I am doing and condense my thoughts into easy to digest sentences. The talk I will deliver to the students will be mainly inspirational and only in the end I will touch on my own pathway. The key message is that in my opinion there are two approaches to be recognised as artist: Either by your work or by your personality. Ultimately you want to be heard in the world of chatter. If you are aiming to be recognised by your work you need to find your style: your voice. If you want to be recognised for who you are you basically have to make noise, be outrageous in one way or another. Of course nothing is as clear-cut… but there is a chance for the quieter ones amongst us.

 

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Categories Absurd, Art, craft, Exhibition, Fun, Life, workshop

Fred

August 21, 2014 //
7

accordion player

This is another shot from the opening. I love these two. They look like they have been playing together forever. But no, it was an impromptu performance. The man on the left is Fred and the little guy is one of John Rew’s puppets. The hand at the top belongs to John. I will have to write about him another time. He did these amazing puppet circus performances on the day. He is such a diehard puppeteer… While on break from the circus performances his puppets still mingled with the audience.

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Categories Art, Comedy, Fun, Hand Puppets, Social Network

Accolade…

August 19, 2014 //
0

I was meant to write something about the Festival of Performing Objects. The Festival is really well received and we get a lot of attention. We even got a little write-up in THE art magazine of New Zealand. So I am taking the short-cut again and just publish what they have published.

artnews

 

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Categories Art, Exhibition, Fun, Hand Puppets, Promotion

First report

August 10, 2014 //
0

skeleton Jonathon Acorn

The opening yesterday was an absolute hit. We had around 500 people of all ages through the gallery. Each and everyone lingering for a while and having a close look at the puppets and watching the performances. The day started off with market day, where kids could make their own simple puppets and we had two puppeteers taking turns in perfroming. The picture above shows Jonathon Acorn’s Skeleton having a break from singing and shaking his bones :). Jonathon is a well-known Auckland busker and it was so fantastic to have him perfroming with his the Skeleton in front of the Gallery yesterday. If you missed him yesterday… You can find him on most sunny days in downtown Auckland :).

skeleton Jonathon Acorn-2

Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, Exhibition, Fun, Hand Puppets

Eve of the opening

August 8, 2014 //
2

FoPO Exhibition-4

The Festival of Performing Objects is opening tomorrow. It is an all day event for me. We have Market Day from 11am to 2pm with buskers and market stalls and puppet making for kids. Then later from 3:30 to 5:30 we have the exhibition opening with the artists attending. It was a very busy week setting up the exhibition, but Kim and I are very excited and pleased with the outcome. It looks amazing! As far as we know it is the biggest collection of puppets in New Zealand since the 1980s. What an achievement.

The picture shows Dragon by Norbert Hausberg, a Wellingtonian puppeteer with 30 years experience. Unfortunately, we only have his puppets as he himself is otherwise engaged. But his puppets are certainly something!

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Categories Art, Comedy, Exhibition, Fun, Hand Puppets, Promotion

Meet the Spoon Family

August 3, 2014 //
0

wooden spoons

At the Festival of Performing Objects we are going to have a Kid’s zone in the Gallery and we hope that the little visitors will take to an impromptu play. I bought a packet of googly eyes for $2 at the Salvation Army Shop, and the wooden spoons in the Everything-is-50%- off-sale at the 2-Dollar-Shop. My ethical conscience is cringing at the price, but as I am living on flour and water at the moment, I told it to shut up! For my workshops I usually make a trip to the North Shore Resource Centre to get material. This is a really good volunteer organisation that my friend Cath put me on to. They collect leftovers, recycled or surplus material and you can get a big bag of all sorts of goodies to create puppets (or other artworks) for a dirt cheap price.  The most expensive part of these characters are the squishy noses made from disposable ear plugs. Unfortunately, they only had orange ones in the hardware store.

Anyway, I got carried away embellishing them. The idea was that the wooden spoons should be really simple so that they are easy to clean. Ah well, the handles are still easy to wipe down and that is where you hold them.

 

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Categories Art, Comedy, craft, Exhibition, Fun, Hand Puppets, Promotion, workshop

Packing up

July 31, 2014 //
5

suitcase

Oh dear, this year seems to be the year of best intentions. I am so sorry for having neglected my blog for some time. Though it doesn’t mean the Dedes have been neglected.

You might know I have lost a few of my major sources of income at the end of last year and I have been working hard to secure new income streams. Now six month later everything came to fruition at once and this just means I am rushed off my feet to fulfill all my promises. My book of “101 recipes with flour and water” is still not finished, however, I am using it a lot, but I am stuck on 51 recipes.  My backyard chooks deliver an invaluable addition to my diet too.

Recently I have taken on a part-time teaching job. My first salaried job in 20 odd years. Even though I have been teaching for a long time, it was always on a contract basis. It seems with a salary inevitably come the politics… Something I want to steer clear off as much as possible. Navigating the foul ground takes a lot of energy. Believe me, I feel some good puppet stories coming on….

The Festival of Performing Objects is about to start. This weekend I have to deliver the Dedes I want to show in the exhibition. Every Dede is keen to pack up and go. Some of them will just sit in the Gallery for the month, while others will get action in the stop-motion workshops of the last week. I have to make a decision who is going to do what. I did a lot of work in the early days of the organisation unfortunately with all the changes to my working life poor Kim (the manager of the arts centre) had to bear the brunt of the recent weeks. She did an amazing work luring puppeteers out of the underwood. I am very confident it will be a fantastic exhibition.

It looks like we are getting quite a bit of attention. The first article about the event was published this week.

HM puppets 28_7_14

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Categories Art, craft, Exhibition, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Promotion, Stop Motion, workshop

Gone bananas

July 18, 2014 //
0

Here is the second film we did last week. This one was created by a group of teenagers as a holiday programme. Pretty slim pickings, but we got there in the end. In this film the kids had to make their own actors and they also created the music, the backdrop and the props. I enjoyed working with the youngsters and I’ve learned a tremendeous amount. The kids on the other hand just thought I was weird… Happy, but weird!

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Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, film, Fun, Life, Stop Motion, workshop

Library visit

July 14, 2014 //
2

At the moment we have school holidays and I did two puppet workshops last week. They couldn’t have be more different. The one I was so looking forward to was a four morning course where the participants were supposed to do the full monty – creating the actors, coming up with the story, making props and then filming the thing. The other one was just one afternoon in the library, where the participants invented an impromptu story and used the Dedes to act it out.

The course in the library was fantastic. It doesn’t take long to set the youngsters (aged between eight and twelve years) off to come up with a weird and wonderful story. There was no stopping them. All of them were running around making up props and chopping and changing the storyline. One of them sneaked in their own puppet. You might notice the non-Dede in the group picture at the end of the film when they celebrate.

Ah well, the other workshop was totally different. First of all it was a different age range. Here the participants were teenagers and puppets are so uncool. It is strange how kids can be so creative when they are twelve and with their thirteenth birthday all the creativity seems to go out the window. And then when they leave school, they are expected to be creative to find a job….

We did get there in the end, though I don’t know how much sticks in their minds, but I’ve learned heaps.

Here is the film from the library.

Enjoy.

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Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, film, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Stop Motion, workshop
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