Archives for category: Hand Puppets
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Boy, oh boy!

September 6, 2012 //
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I didn’t want to name the five puppets I used in the installation, so that I don’t get too attached to them. But of course, when you work on an artwork for a while, you will get attached and of course they’ve got names. This one here is simply Boy. He has his cap pulled deep over his face and has his eyes are closed (one eye is covered up by  strands of hair).

The imagery used on the skins gives clues about the puppets’ personalities. Boy can’t see the wood for the trees. He has an issue with time and speed and on the back of his head is a rather large nude female torso. You get the picture…

The installation itself is called Like – What? and questions social media networks.

Recently I read in a couple of articles that the shooters of Colorado and Norway weren’t on face book. The articles claimed everyone not on face book is increasingly treated as anti social and suspicious. In my opinion it is a really strange and dangerous conclusion. I would have ignored it if I had only read it once. I seriously hope the articles drew on the same source and their conclusion is not a widely held belief. I will ask the question in reverse: Does being on face book automatically make someone a sociable and good person?

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Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life

Award night

September 4, 2012 //
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So, last night was the night of the Awards! And I can finally show images of my artwork publicly. I’ve chosen the Alien, as that is what I felt like last night. The event was really interesting and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Not sure if I would put another artwork into the competition, at least not one that is as delicate as the one this time. One thing I learned last night… There is a fine line between delicate and flimsy, and it is all in the presentation.

My artwork is a very, very delicate one, with many different layers and one has to engage with it for a while to discover their multitude. With so many other artworks squeezed into the available space and the huge amount of people shuffling past, it looked flimsy. One lady knocked one of my figures over, looked at it briefly and very quickly disappeared into the crowd. No attempt was made to set up the figure again. Another visitor, who had observed the incident, kindly put it upright again, but didn’t want to spend too much time doing it, I assume, so people wouldn’t think he knocked the thing over. But I was the lucky one, another artist had a piece of her installation knocked off the top. At least my figures don’t break!

There is some really amazing artwork there, so it is worthwhile going and having a look. The Finalists were divided into two groups, the travelling show from which the winners were chosen and the Salon de Refusé. The artworks of the second group will stay in Auckland until mid November. Fitting in all the artwork doesn’t  leave much space for them to breathe. And we all know art needs space… Watching the people, it seemed hardly anybody looked at any artwork for more than a couple of seconds. No surprise really, there is so much to see and all the people to look at too… I am pleased I didn’t miss it.

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Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life

Tada – the dedes are back

August 7, 2012 //
2

You might have noticed that it was very quiet around the dedes lately and I have been putting photographs up on my blog. I did this as I was biding my time and holding my breath.

I have entered an installation of five dede puppets into the Wallace Art Awards, a very reputable New Zealand award for contemporary visual art. Yesterday I got an email saying that my work has been accepted as one of the Finalists. I accidentally opened the email without preparing myself and sat there squealing for a couple of minutes. It must have been such a strange noise as a businessman who has his office further down the corridor came running in thinking I was having a heart attack!

It is an annual award. You send in a photograph of your work first. From this a panel of three notable artists select the finalists. If  your work has been selected, the next step is to send in the real thing. From there the work is further whittled down and some selected work goes into an exhibition from which the winners are chosen. The prizes are overseas residencies to further your artistic development.

The grand opening is on the 3rd of September, so I still have to hold my breath for a bit. But I can assure you for me and the dedes it means a lot that they are accepted. Getting thus far is just tremendous.

On a less serious note:

This week was supposed to be bird week on my blog. These images were the ones I had originally selected for today. These are shags sitting in a tree. You have to look at their heads. I call the sequence Air Acrobatics.

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Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life, Photography

Inspiration

July 18, 2012 //
4

Doesn’t this rooster look mean?

…Sorry, this is a human’s interpretation of an animal’s facial expression. Of course I have no idea what’s going on in his head. But he is certainly eyeballing the viewer. You have to admit he is an absolutely gorgeous creature.

A lot of things put us off at at first sight, but when we look again we might discover the beauty in the beast. Unfortunately we have the tendency to make our judgements hastily and move on to the next thing, always worried we could miss out on something important. We skim and skip all day long. Unfortunately this has quite the opposite effect: We miss a lot. Photography is a magnificent tool to stop the world and look again.

I have one friend who doesn’t want to look at my puppets. He finds them disturbing. Fair enough, but he won’t elaborate on what puts him off exactly. I would be so interested. Not everybody has to love them, but I am curious what they trigger in different people.

The stories that go with the puppets are of course reflections of my own experiences with people. Creating the puppets and writing up their traits is very therapeutic. While photography is a discovery of the visible world, making the puppets enables me to explore the non-tangible world, primarily relationships. When I have finished a puppet, I have looked at so many different angles of the same issue. While I still might not like the situation, I will have a better understanding and most importantly I will have kept my sanity in the process. For me they are like voodoo dolls gone peaceful.

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Categories Hand Puppets, Life, Photography, Social Network

Push-Push

July 17, 2012 //
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I digressed again, didn’t I?

The blog is supposed to be about the dede puppets and it is time to introduce the latest addition to the troupe: Push-Push. She is a nice enough puppet, but she is always blowing her own trumpet. If you look past the glitter, you will find she is plain boring, and doesn’t have many ideas of her own. She loves to slip into her colourful circus gear and a real transformation takes place: “Look at me, look at me, look at what I can do” she calls out.  And then she shows you tricks as old as Methuselah. “Yawn,” I say and walk away.

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Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Photography, Relationships, Social Network

Little history

July 10, 2012 //
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This painting The conspirators I have done a few years back, when I’ve just started painting in acrylic. This was well before the puppets, but looking at it now I think it is very foreboding, they were already in there.

I am reading this book about Popular Theatre at the moment (Schlechter, J. (ed), Popular Theatre, Routledge 2003). The subtitle is A source book and gee it really is. As a visual artist I never looked at the history of theatre and certainly not at popular theatre. I never really thought about, how important and wide-spread puppetry was in history. Puppets were always part of the common entertainment but their stories were passed on orally. Our (European) cultural inheritance is based on written works by playwrights who had to please their financiers, the small, aristocratic elite. I read somewhere that even Goethe, the great German writer was originally inspired by a puppet show to write his most famous work “Faust”.

Popular Theatre  had to earn their living by attracting the masses. Authorities were unable to control or manipulate it for their own ends and therefore it was often censored or dismissed by governments and academia.  But of course this didn’t work too well, quite to the contrary. As the performers weren’t financially dependent on one particular source, they didn’t need to conform to externally imposed standards. They basically could say what they wanted. Often the more they made fun of the establishment, the bigger audiences they attracted.

Peter Schumann, the great contemporary puppeteer and founder of the Bread and Puppet Theatre said: [puppet theatre is] by definition of its most persuasive characteristics, an anarchic art, subversive and untameable by nature, an art which is easier researched in police records than in theatre chronicles, an art which by fate and spirit does not aspire to represent governments or civilisations, but prefers its own secret and demeaning stature in society, representing, more or less, the demons of that society and definitely not its institutions. [p41]

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Categories Art, Hand Puppets

Puppet friends

July 5, 2012 //
2

These two, Pig and Witch, were early puppets. (If I recall correctly, Witch was the third puppet I ever made). They are a reminder of how relationships change over time. These two were really good mates once, but now they can’t stand each other. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I suspect it is because Witch turned into a health freak and a teetotaler, while Pig likes his booze. Pig is now hanging out with Professor while Witch keeps more or less to herself.

I noticed the more puppets I make the more negative (in my opinion) traits they display. The first lot of fifteen, they were my friends. They have their little quirks, the ones you just reckon with in friends. Some of them I like more, others a little less, but they are all puppets I wouldn’t mind inviting round to my place.

The newer ones are more like acquaintances. I know them, but some of them have traits I totally dislike. The worst is, that I can easily come up with these now.

I have two more books planned for later this year, early next year. The next one will be of course about Puppy the love sick stalker (by the way, he has moved back into the house and he is starting to annoy me) and the following one will be about Hermit loosing his job. Pretty sure all the negative characters will find their place in this one.

I am currently working on a puppet called Push–Push. It is one that drives her own agenda, no matter what. Along the way she tramples all over the others. Yes, pretty sure you find her at the average workplace. And then I think, I really need to get started on Procrastinator as well.

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Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life, Relationships, Self-publishing, Social Network

Point of view

July 3, 2012 //
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I have mentioned before on my blog that I am obsessed with eyes. Tree eyes fascinate me, even though I find them sometimes tricky to photograph. I have to think about the camera settings a little bit longer. But with so many other things, the dede puppets pretty much stopped my eye collection in its tracks.

When researching puppets you very quickly come across the name Peter Schumann. He founded the Bread and Puppet Theater in 1963 in New York and in the 70s moved to a farm in Vermont. There they still hold puppet events and workshops today (bread and puppets). A really interesting story.

I was amazed by Peter Schumann’s article “The Radicality of the Puppet Theatre” (reprinted in Schlechter, J (ed). Popular Theatre, Routledge 2003).  Amongst other enlightening aspects, he points out the clear difference between actors and puppets. An actor tries to fake a character. He tries to become somebody he is not. Ergo an actor’s success is based on his capability to deceive the viewer. A puppet on the other hand is the character. It is what it is and the stories emerge from within the puppet.

It makes all perfect sense to me.

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Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life

One dislike

July 2, 2012 //
2

I have created twenty-six characters to date and so far have only one character I really dislike. This is Twoface.  She looks straight at you and smiles. Superficially she looks like a pleasant enough person, very non-committal though. Her response to what you say is usually: “Ah, yes” or “Really” or “Indeed.” But you know exactly she doesn’t give a toss about anything. Even worse, when you turn her around, she has a second face rolling her eyes and it is very clear she believes everybody (except for herself) is a tosser.

I haven’t incorporated her in any stories yet, but I think she will become the boss. I will only use her if absolutely necessary.

two_face roling eyesNow that I look at her second face and know that she is the boss, I feel slightly sorry for her. She must be in middle management and feels a bit of pressure from higher up. While she rolls her eyes, she does look a bit scared. But still I thoroughly dislike her behavior and I will stay clear of her as much as possible.

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Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life, Social Network

Tears of a clown

July 1, 2012 //
3

A friend of mine gave me a book of short stories by Paul Gallico to read. The one she wanted me to read in particular was Love of seven dolls. I wonder why?

No, seriously… I would not have understood the story entirely, had I not started making puppets myself.

The story was written in the early 1950’s and is set in France. It is about a puppeteer, called Captaine Coq, who saves a young girl from throwing herself into the Seine by letting the puppets talk to her. The girl and the puppets become good friends, but Captaine Coq himself is a real bastard. As the girl has nowhere to go, the puppets invite her to join the show. She interacts with the puppets naturally, and endures the treatment of the Captain. After the show becomes a success, the girl finds an admirer who wants to marry her. She is set to leave and the puppets are terribly sad, but Captaine Coq couldn’t give a toss. Only at the last minute is he able to express his own love for the girl.

In the reviews the girl is always the heroine, who saved the nasty puppeteer through her love for the puppets. If I hadn’t started puppet making, I would have seen it in exactly this way. But now that I know the spell hand puppets cast on their puppeteer, I know the puppets were the real heroes and ultimately Captain Coq saved himself by creating these puppets. The girl could have been replaced by another girl or another incident. But without the puppets, he would have lost touch with the real world entirely. He could not have escaped the shell he was in, a shell that was forced upon him by war.

The story tells us he had started making the puppets in a POW camp out of boredom and he started to entertain his fellow prisoners. Through his experiences in the war he had obviously lost his believe in the good in people. The war crippled him emotionally. A sarcastic bastard in real life, he could act out his caring and benevolent side through the puppets. In this way he could maintain a little flame of warmth.

Believe me, I have thought a lot about the crippling emotional effect of war. After all I am German… Emotional coldness is a black neck swan!

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Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life, Relationships
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