Archives for posts with tag: book
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

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 The girl could have been replaced by another girl or another incident.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!

Tags , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life, Relationships

We’ve got an invitation

June 5, 2012 //
2

I have to say, for me the expression “making friends” has taken on a new dimension. Yesterday my Dedes and I were invited to hold a workshop with elderly people in October. So it is still a while to go and I have heaps of time to think how I am going to do it. However, after our last outing I have a fairly good idea what could work. And I am looking forward to it.

Tags , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, craft, Hand Puppets, Life

Missed

May 28, 2012 //
2

I am pretty sure I saw Chance zipping past me when I left the shops yesterday. I only got a brief glimpse of her. Oh, I so wished I hadn’t fluffed around with Minor and Detail for that long… Chance is a difficult one to get hold of. Her father was a gipsy and she has no fixed abode (and would you believe it? She doesn’t even own a mobile).

I consider her one of my best friends, even though we hardly see each other at times. When we meet again, we just continue where we left off last time as if we had only seen each other the other day. I would have loved to have talked to her yesterday. She is such a positive little thing!

Tags , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Books, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life

Minor and Detail

May 27, 2012 //
4

At the greengrocer’s I bumped into Detail and her daughter Minor. These two never fail to amaze me. Detail is such a petite thing, always neatly dressed and every strand of hair in the right place. She looks like she just stepped out of a fashion magazine, even if she only pops down the driveway to the letterbox. Minor on the other hand is a little cloddish, with her worn out sneakers and baggy jumpers. I thought she is only fourteen, but Detail corrected me, Minor is three month short of seventeen. She is much larger and taller than her mother and even though she stoops, her mother still has to look up to her.

Of course Detail wanted to know what Devil said to me the other day. It felt like I was at the inquisition. The three of us were standing in the middle of the aisle at the busiest time at the grocery shop. Don’t you hate these people? I felt very awkward, but she insisted on hearing the entire story and just wouldn’t let me go. I would have liked to side with Minor on that one: “Wha’ ever”

No need to ask Detail for her opinion on anything, she always wants to have more info before she can make up her mind.

Tags , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Books, Hand Puppets, Self-publishing

Devil got his wish

May 26, 2012 //
0

I’ve heard the weather is going to pack in. Therefore I’ve spent the morning recording puppet shows. We take them outside on the deck. I like the light there in the morning. First we had to wait for the fog to lift, by the time it was gone, the entire neighbourhood was out and about and hammering away or mowing the lawns.  I always deemed our neighbourhood extremely quiet, but gee, Saturday morning every man and his dog has some business outside. The birds were chirping away as well (I love the song of the tuis) and then Mr Whippy must have done a roaring trade in ice cream, his “Greensleeves” jingle went on like forever.  I thought summer is well and truly over,  obviously not for Mr Whippyyyyyyy.

Anyway, I think I have some snippets I can work with and it will give me something to do, should it rain tomorrow. We recorded Devil and Mouse, when Devil tells Mouse that Hermit has written a book. In the timeline it sits before the other film, where Mouse tells Pirate. But I thought Pirate’s response was a lovely snappy one, so I recorded it first. The conversation between  Devil and Mouse is a little bit longer. But finally, Devil got his wish, he is now going to be in a film as well…

Tags , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Books, Hand Puppets

Now, I am in the poo

May 24, 2012 //
0

Last night Devil paid me a visit. He wanted to talk to me as the spokesperson of the dede puppets. They are all very concerned. I didn’t know the dede puppets had a spokesperson. Honestly I don’t think he was voted in. But he obviously thinks he is the Patron Saint of the dede puppets, as he is the oldest. (Patron Saint… it’s a bit rich isn’t it?)

Anyway, he said they are all concerned about where the dede puppet blog is going. He reminded me I had promised to set it up for the dedes as a forum. He, Devil,  now accuses me of hijacking it for my other artwork. He actually said, “What’s so beautiful about a Giant Weta, all  the dede puppets have nicer eyes…” He quoted the one post where I said it is all about eyes at the moment.

Okay, point taken. Devil himself has gorgeous eyes… I still think (and I am not being defensive here) there should be a place for other photographs on the blog.

So, we had this long and heated discussion about whether I should be allowed to put other artwork up. In the end I had this feeling he was mainly miffed with me because the film features Pirate and Mouse. He insisted it was him who broke the news of the book to Mouse, so he should have been in the film. I promised him he will be in the next one. (We are moving towards winter and I will have more time to do this kind of stuff). I basically made this promise to get him off my back. It was past midnight when he finally disappeared.

It took more than an hour to get the smell of sulpher out of the house. This is the reason, why I normally like to catch up with Devil at the pub.

I think I will canvas the other dede puppets about what they think on the subject. I am still not sure whether he made a mountain out of a mole hill.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Books, Fun, Hand Puppets

Coming soon

May 10, 2012 //
2

Last weekend I finished my first puppet show clip. It’s only like a minute or so long. I am going to put it on Youtube this weekend. This is another first for me. The book publishing part was easy, as I dealt with the related issues all my working life. I am a paper person… But, boy, had I fun making this clip. And I have plenty of ideas for more!

 

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Books, Hand Puppets, Self-publishing

Still spinning

April 26, 2012 //
0

Moving on

I was hoping, once the launch is over, I can slow down a bit. But I can’t. I have no idea what drives me at the moment and where the energy is coming from. I have two new photographic projects, I would like to embark on, though the puppets are still requiring all of my attention. I am currently putting a proposal together for an exhibition in a gallery and I am also about to send a couple of books to the mothership (that is the newspaper the puppets are made of). I will labour over that particular letter for a while, as I will have to write it in German. Even though German is my mother tongue, it won’t come easy as I haven’t written a letter in my native language for yonkers. I don’t even know the proper format anymore.

I still have to update our website, but I think I will capitulate here. Down the corridor is a company that does web sites and they will be able to solve the technical problems much quicker and more elegantly than I ever could. This will free me up to do things I really like to do. Time is an extremely precious commodity… But what am I telling you (:

I’ve noticed, that my posts don’t get many likes at the moment… Sorry if I bore you, what I am writing here is more like a diary, basically for me to remember in a year’s time what it was like. I am also writing for my students as they will have to put themselves on the line once they will have completed their studies. I hope sharing what I go through will help. As one artist friend of mine told me: “When you go out there and exhibit, you are nailing your heart to the wall.” I don’t know if these were his own words, but they stuck!

Tags , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Books, Life

Minor detail of selling

April 24, 2012 //
0

So, the book is launched. I had my five minutes of fame, and now I am left with the minor problem of selling the print run. At the moment you can’t get the book anywhere else than in my office. And boy, every poor person who comes through the door, is greeted by three puppets and a grinning me. If they want it or not, they have to listen to my story and nobody leaves the room without having bought a book. It won’t be long and I will have exhausted all the people I know and I will  slide back into my hermit state, because everybody is avoiding me (just kidding).

Being a real artist, of course I have procrastinated the selling task.  I always said, once I have the books in my hot little hands, I will put them up on fishpond.co.nz (that is sort of the New Zealand answer to Amazon) and also on our own website. I dutifully read up about how to put a paypal button on a website and I am in the process of updating the website generally. Paypal says it takes 15 minutes to set up the button… Yeah right! I haven’t figured out yet, how you can charge different shipping costs for people here and overseas. But maybe I am just too tired now. Tomorrow is a public holiday in New Zealand and I will try with a fresh mind then. Thankfully, I have to sell books and not cream cakes. So it doesn’t matter if they are not sold by the weekend.

I have sent the 2 required copies to Legal Deposit Office of the National Library yesterday, that means that the book is now officially published in New Zealand. That’s at least something!

 

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Book Launch, Books, Hand Puppets, Self-publishing

Official photo of Hermit :)

April 21, 2012 //
0

author photo I just looked through the launch images my friend Renee had sent me.

I think this is a beautiful one of Hermit. It was taken right after the puppet show and the actors are pretty tired. Ducky, (the one in the foreground) wasn’t part of the actual show, but he has always something to say and wants to be centre stage. Pig (lying on the table) drank the entire bottle of snaps by itself and is now out of it.  Pirate (at the top) casts his good eye around for the next opportunity to make money. And Mouse (on the left) is just exhausted from running around all evening (tongue hanging out). Witch, Devil (very obscured) and Deutsch Fraulein are protecting Hermit from being recognised (:

Of course everybody knows by now Hermit is actually a Hermitess. It is the age of equal opportunity after all…

Tags , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Book Launch, Books, craft, Hand Puppets, Self-publishing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »