Challenge: Puppetry

Clive Hicks-Jenkin's puppets for the 2013 performance of The Mare's Tale by Mid Wales Chamber Orchestra

Clive Hicks-Jenkin's puppets for the 2013 performance of The Mare's Tale by Mid Wales Chamber Orchestra

Clive Hicks-Jenkin's Expressionist Stair-Set for the 2013 performance of The Mare's Tale by Mid Wales Chamber Orchestra

Inspired by the astonishing emotional complexity of the interactions between Clive's puppets, his screen animations of 2D maquettes, and human actors and musicians in the 2013 performance of The Mare's Tale by the Mid Wales Chamber Orchestra, there has been an outpouring of interest in all things puppetry moving around the blogosphere. The fantastic result is a new challenge over at Clive's blog, calling all available hands to get building.

Logo created by Peter Slight, curator of the Puppet Challenge. Click for Link.

In preparation for the challenge, to help with ideas and to underline the fact that there are many, very different styles and materials available to the new puppeteer, Clive has been posting (and will continue to do so) about great puppets both ancient and modern-- his site has become a veritable museum of delightful discoveries...

"The Chinese shadow-puppet tradition is said to date from the reign of the Emperor Wu in the Han Dynasty. When his favourite concubine died, he ordered his court officials to bring her back to life. An articulated ‘puppet’ in her likeness was made of donkey-skin, and the concubine was conjured for the Emperor by means of moving lamps projecting her puppet-shadow onto a screen." --Clive

"In the Javanese shadow-puppet tradition of Wayang Kulit, the word for the shadow-screen is Kelir, and just as the puppet-master is obscured from the audience by this fragile veil, it’s believed that the ‘mover of the world’, the Jagatkarana, is hidden from mortal sight by the screen that separates the planes of existence."--Clive

He tells us that though they would only ever perform as shadows on a screen, great attention was given to the colors and decorations that were considered a gift of thanks and reverence to the shadow puppet itself:

Such shadow puppets would be a logical next step for those of us who took to the lessons on maquette- building from Clive here, and took part in the previous challenge and exhibition here. (Don't miss parts II and III, following that.)

Mare Maquette created by Clive Hicks-Jenkins for On-Screen Animations during the Mare's Tale performance this year.

But, for a more three-dimensional approach, there is also the possibility of a glove puppet, like Clive's Ogre:

Ogre Glove Puppet by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

or like this Mr. Punch, by Julian Crouch:

Julian Crouch and his Mr. Punch

Then there are metal puppets, exemplified by the Theatre le Licorne's Spartacus set and crew:

Theatre le Licorne's Spartacus

Theatre le Licorne's Spartacus

Theatre le Licorne's Spartacus

And then there is always, for the bravest among us, the inspiration offered by the puppets (and their puppeteers) of 69˚S, created by Erik Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff of Phantom Limb:

As with all projects on Clive's site, this one introduces you to all kinds of inspiration, both from him and from the comments boxes below his posts, where I discovered a new artist, Jill Desborough, also a puppeteer, among other things...

Mrs. Thackery, by Jill Desborough

Mrs. Pincher, by Jill Desborough

The Crow by Jill Desborough

It caught my eye that she also had created an etching and aquatint Anatomical Alphabet, which was another challenge put together on Clive's site here.

A is for Articulated, by Jill Desborough

C is for Codpiece by Jill Desborough

I love the way she draws out the letter in unexpected details...

O is for Ornamented by Jill Desborough

E is for Eyes by Jill Desborough

And she also has this lovely Trojan Horse Statue:

Into the City by Jill Desborough

Into the City by Jill Desborough

As contributors sign up for the challenge, I am discovering a slew of new artists...

There's Rachel Larkins, who creates lovely automata:

Automaton by Rachel Larkins. The mirror shows the back side of the doll.

Design sheet and Automaton by Rachel Larkins

...here in action:

There are the strange and miraculous creations of Hussam Elsherif:

by Hussam Elsherif

by Hussam Elsherif

by Hussam Elsherif

And there are the illuminations of Stuart Kolakovic:

Detail from the Death of King Arthur, by Stuart Kolakovic

Wenceslas, by Stuart Kolakovic 

Wenceslas, by Stuart Kolakovic

....and there are many other wondrous artists I have met before there--go and see, and take up the challenge!!

Don't Wait

Via

In 1879, a postman in Southern France, Ferdinand Cheval, picked up a stone somewhere along his route and made a decision to build a castle. He had no training at all.

"I was walking very fast when my foot caught on something that sent me stumbling a few meters away, I wanted to know the cause. In a dream I had built a palace, a castle or caves, I cannot express it well... I told no one about it for fear of being ridiculed and I felt ridiculous myself. Then fifteen years later, when I had almost forgotten my dream, when I wasn't thinking of it at all, my foot reminded me of it. My foot tripped on a stone that almost made me fall. I wanted to know what it was... It was a stone of such a strange shape that I put it in my pocket to admire it at my ease. The next day, I went back to the same place. I found more stones, even more beautiful, I gathered them together on the spot and was overcome with delight... It's a sandstone shaped by water and hardened by the power of time. It becomes as hard as pebbles. It represents a sculpture so strange that it is impossible for man to imitate, it represents any kind of animal, any kind of caricature."
"I said to myself: since Nature is willing to do the sculpture, I will do the masonry and the architecture." ( Becker, Howard S. Art Worlds)

The non-offending first stone

He carried stones in his pockets, then began to use a wheelbarrow on his route, picking up whatever caught his eye.
The castle is 85 feet long and stretches from 26-32 feet high.
 "You start wondering," the facteur wrote, "if you have not been carried away into a fantastic dream with boundaries beyond the scope of imagination."" (New York Times, Mary Blume, May 3, 2007)

He ignored ridicule; he ignored the fact that he had no training. He dreamt of building a palace, and so he did. Stone by stone. It took him 33 years.

Via

Via Wikipedia

Ewa Erzulie

Ewa and the Green Lion by zoe blue
18x24 acrylic on panel

One of the most striking aspects of the traditions surrounding the devotions to Erzulie is that they always end with her weeping. Erzulie is lovely, beautiful, and she has the adoration of all men, yet she does not strike hateful jealousy in the women, because of her child-like innocence. She induces wonder and care, she is like a child. And, though she begins all celebrations in her honor filled with giddiness and pleasure at the excess of beautiful and expensive things that are always lavished on her parties, she slowly grows sad, accusing the people of not honoring her enough, not giving her enough, not loving her enough. In Maya Deren's book The Divine Horsemen, she suggests that this is just another aspect of her child-like behavior (along with an "impatience with economies, with calculation, even with careful evaluation" 139), that you cannot give a child enough attention to satiate its need, and that those present at the devotions understand this and soothe her. I feel, however, that perhaps Erzulie is right. We do not devote enough of our attentions to child-like wonder, to endless and all-enveloping love--if we did, the world would be a much different place.
In Candomblé Ketu, Ewá represents the water element, and is the goddess of enchantment, beauty, and harmony. Like Erzulie, in the related Voodoo pantheon, she is universally loved and loving and "represents all that is fragile and sensitive." According to Morwyn, in Magic from Brazil, "Euá was so beautiful that men would fight to the death to possess her. In order to stop the carnage she changed herself into a puddle of water that evaporated to the sky, condensed into a cloud, and fell as rain. Thus she is known as the deity of transformation."
Here, I am fusing the two water divinities, hoping for a major transformation such as the one Erzulie begs for, one in which I no longer need to mess with stupidities like balancing my checkbook, for example...
The story of Erzulie, the story of Ewá, also reminds me of the Chinese bodhisattva Guan Yin, who also caused a massive transformation, defeating violence: during an unjust and forced visit to the Underworld, she was so overwhelmed with compassion for the souls which suffered untold tortures there, her very love transformed that hell into a paradise. She changed, simply by being full of compassion, the very order of things (something to think about the next time someone calls you a naive utopian). She is, like Ewá and Erzulie, the patroness of mothers and of sailors, and she can be called upon to bring rain.

detail of Ewa and the Green Lion

Alchemists, the precursors to our modern chemists, also strove for major transformation. The endless writings on the steps necessary to transmute base metals into gold are thought by some to have been mere code for a higher transmutation, an internal transmutation, in which the base form of the self becomes light, reaches higher consciousness. Alchemists sought to create an elixir of healing and eternal life, and one of the code names for that ultimate elixir was "the remedy of the green lion."

Here, Erzulie-Ewa is caught in mid-transformation at the base of Legba's tree, her hair feathering out into bird's wings and her torso spilling to the ground. The green lion frolics in the water.