Archives for posts with tag: Characters
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A rare find…

October 16, 2012 //
2

Devil is building a case against me… He says I neglect him and he wants to put me in front of the dede puppet tribunal. I am not too worried, (despite I am currently re-reading Kafka’s The Trial).

I wonder if Devil’s Advocate will represent him in court.  I don’t know who I could employ as lawyer if he does. Personally I don’t think  Devil has a leg to stand on, but I can’t laugh it off or take it too lightly. Devil is building the case around this photograph he found in the shed. He says it is proof I have taken Witch, Cat and Mouse on holiday, but I won’t even take him on a little outing across the road. He believes I am prejudiced towards devils. He wants to sue me for one million dollars in damages for my continued ill-treatment of him.

Obviously he has never been to Witch’s house, otherwise he would know that this image was taken in her living room in front of the horrible photo-wallpaper Witch is so proud of. This type of wallpaper was very popular in the seventies and obviously Witch hasn’t renovated since then.

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Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Photography

Now he is grumpy

October 15, 2012 //
0

Sure enough, On Sunday the weather was much better (at least between the showers).  Devil pestered me all morning to go on our outing. I did not have the time, I really couldn’t fit him in. In the end he got very miffed with me. He didn’t leave the sofa at all but made heaps of snide remarks while I was pacing up and down the hallway trying to get organised. At one stage I had enough and told him off for his upsetting behaviour. When I talked to him he looked a bit meek, and now he is curled up in the corner of the sofa and feeling sorry for himself.  He will be okay when I come home tonight. I am sure he will be back to his devilish self in no time. But seeing him how he is right now, makes me feel really bad…

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Categories Art, Fun, Life, Relationships

REvisited

October 12, 2012 //
3

Two friends of mine dragged me to the Gallery yesterday, where my installation is on display at the moment. I was fearing the trip, as I am not entirely over the shock of the bargain basement feeling I was left with last time. But it was good, really good. Liar looked me straight in the eye and said: “You need to be honest to yourself!… Why are you doing all this… us… Why are you making us?….”

All I could answer was:  “Because I love you!”

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Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life

Emotional cross-dressers

September 22, 2012 //
0

Now to a typical  puppet subject… Emotional cross-dressing. I have been thinking about this for quite some time and I believe this is the real reason for my puppets’ existence. My puppets can have all these traits without being aggravating. They are not based on anybody in particular, but show easily recognised generic behaviour.

Emotional cross-dressing comes in different guises and is a kind of unintentional lie, a self-defense mechanism. These particular cross-dressers are people who, for some reason or another, hide their real emotions and pretend to have different feelings. It comes on a sliding scale with two poles. On one end you find the always friendly person, sweet and kind, but when you look away the bile rises straight to their eyeballs. On the other end of the scale is the old grump or tough guy, who pushes everybody away, but when you invest the time to know him better, he is the most generous and friendliest person ever. Of course there are a lot of shades between these two extremes.

In both cases the cross-dressers themselves suffer more than their surrounding, as they are not in sync with their own emotions and most of the time they have the feeling of being terribly misunderstood.

More often than not they are forced to cross-dress by expectations put on them, for example, by parents, spouses, friends. And they want nothing more than to oblige, to fulfill the expectations. But at one stage they have to, and will, crack.

PS: People who use these strategies to knowingly deceive others to get an advantage, I would call devious.

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Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life, Relationships

Some Bodies

September 21, 2012 //
0

This image is a composition I couldn’t resist. I don’t know if you could call it subtle. Thank goodness, it is not  a self-portrait :) I am a middle of the road kind of person, through and through.

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Categories Art, Life, Photography

Where is the sign post?

September 18, 2012 //
0

Last night I went to an exhibition opening of my students. I was impressed. This is one of the things I enjoy most about teaching, seeing individuals developing in their art. They are by no means all young kids. In photography we have a lot of mature students. Unfortunately I have the ungrateful task of teaching digital imaging. Generally, the younger ones just do it, the older ones say “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it”… but at one stage (and I can usually wait for it) they come up to me with a big wide smile all over their face and say something like “I am proud of myself, I have done so much on the computer”. The best of course is when they say “I love digital now!” I can’t take the credit for this, though. It doesn’t have much to do with my teaching, but with them gaining confidence in an area they never would have thought they could excel in. Good on you!

After the event I was hurled towards the opposite end of human emotions. I bumped into a friend, a very talented musician, who is currently drifting down the path towards middle age. I love him to bits. He really has something going for him, but he doesn’t know yet what, and he is increasingly running out of patience. He told me, and I repeat verbatim: “I don’t like what the world has on offer at the moment.”

Oh dear! What a puppet moment!

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Categories Art, Life, Photography, Relationships

Ok, ok – not ok

September 16, 2012 //
0

A few years back I attended a training course for a volunteer organisation. One could describe the course as psychology for lay people. Most of it was common sense. But there was this one diagram describing the basic mental attitudes, which I found very good. I re-drew it this morning; something I wanted to do for some time. Yep, I know representatives of each and every one of those four catagories.

Personally, I am oscillating between the two left images (as I guess most women do!) When I am in the top left, everything is honky dory. I strongly believe in win-win situations and I work hard to achieve them. When I am in the bottom left, my soul mate comes in very handy :). Thank you!

Problems arise, when I come across someone who has the mental attitude of the top right quadrant. Often I simply walk away, but I can also turn into a lioness, particularly if  a third party is involved. Lioness mode, believe me, is not a pretty picture and it is very exhausting, so I try to avoid it… Unfortunately I am not always successful.

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Categories Art, Fun, Life, Relationships, Social Network

Finally…

September 11, 2012 //
0

…The complete Like – What? installation. The figures are looking outwards and the connections at the modems form a pentagram. The heads are sitting on clay balls at the top of aluminum tubes and when somebody walks past they sway ever so slightly. I will leave the rest of the interpretation up to you…. you know the characters already :)

I wanted to make new puppets last weekend, but got side-tracked with revamping my blog. I updated the Home page and the About page and added the Milestones menu, though I haven’t added the installation characters to the Character page yet. This will have to wait until next weekend.

I am now in my seventh month of writing this blog and I do notice a gradual change from the initial difficulties of sharing my art with an unknown audience. It has become easier over time. The biggest hurdle for me is seeing how many gifted people are out there, and I wonder who should read all this….  I personally would like to have more time to spend reading the other blogs and discover new ones. In the end it is no different to real life is it? You have a couple of blogs you always check up on. You hang out with some more than with others, but  it changes over time until you suddenly notice that you haven’t seen one for a while.

A big fat Thank you  to all the people who check regularly on my progress. I really appreciate it!

I will have to concentrate on my book for a while and I was going to check out LULU last night, but then I skyped for ages with the other side of the world, so this didn’t happen. I came across a German self-publishing site called Tredition, this could become plan B.

Reading today’s post again, I notice it is all about what I wanted to do but didn’t … I guess I will have to start on my Procrastinator puppet soon.

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Categories Art, Books, Self-publishing

Smug

September 10, 2012 //
4

Smug Little Devil is the last of the figures of the installation. He does his own thing and makes sure it is always to his advantage. Empathy is a word he has never heard of. At first he seems friendly enough, but when you know him better, you will find out this is the only emotion he ever shows; a smug grin. There is no way you can figure out what he is up to, but the horns give it away, it’s nothing good :).

Now that the whole thing with the Art Awards is over, I have to re-think my marketing strategy for Hermit’s Web, my book.  I still have to contact German publishers… the Frankfurt book fair is only a month away. Personally I think the story is very suitable for the German market, after all I am German and it shows in my sense of humour (okay, some people say the Germans don’t have one – we do… admittedly it’s sometimes a bit obscure).

Lately I am also considering a paper back issue to sell via Amazon. I am looking into Create Space to publish on demand (the book gets printed when somebody orders it). I have been a bit reluctant  to pursue this option, as I have no experience with their print quality – in particular their colour quality. With the puppets, my book has of course colour images throughout. My worry is if they are reproduced in poor quality, it does more harm than good – Oh, these artists are picky!

Anyway, on the upside, my friends in Europe could order their copy more conveniently. So this option will get pushed around in my head for a little longer.

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Categories Art, Books, Hand Puppets, Life

Boy, oh boy!

September 6, 2012 //
2

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
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