News

Puppet-a-Go-Go

The Puppet-a-Go-Go show was great fun, though the lead up was a little frantic. Alexa Fraser and I were working  on our marionettes until the last possible moment, and we went from 12 marionettes to 5, but we figured 5 was a party and 12 would be too much. Right? Honestly, we were both so busy completing other projects that we knew we had to reduce the numbers. But we were happy with what we accomplished and the wall of 1000+ finger puppets was a wonder to behold.

Photo of a few of my finger puppets by Joe Lapinski.

Setting for a Fairy Tale

Setting for a Fairy Tale by Joseph Cornell

Setting for a Fairy Tale by Joseph Cornell

With all the mask and puppet making of the past few months, I’ve been itching to get back to some collage work. Making the collages for Alice in Plunderland was completely absorbing. I loved it. I had fun at my show too, and I recently received a generous cheque from the Ontario Arts Council for Exhibition Assistance, making it all the sweeter. Thank you OAC!

Now I’m combing through books to find a fairy tale or legend to illustrate, but the more books I look at, the more source material I flip through, the more I think I want to work on a personal project that I’ve had at the back of my mind for years. I can’t talk about it of course – not until it’s well underway.

As I think about collage, read stories and look at images, one of my favourite pieces of art, Joseph Cornell’s Setting for a Fairy Tale, keeps coming to my mind. It is so simple, elegant, beautiful, and it contains untold stories of promise and heartache.

Ants in the Park

A few months ago, my family and I headed to lovely Montebello Park for an afternoon picnic in support of Our Community Food Store, a wonderful initiative started by my multi-talented neighbour, Karrie Porter. The goal of Our Community Food Store is to open a downtown food coop in St Catharines. After spending seven years passing under the ghastly QEW when we need to buy food, I almost swoon when I think that soon we might be able to walk a few downtown blocks to a well-stocked grocery store run by friendly people.

When we reached the park, I was surprised and delighted to discover three ant masks I’d made for Theatre Beyond Words‘ production of “Tales from the Garden” in action.

In addition to her work on Our Community Food Store and several other project, it turns out that Karrie  was the coordinator for neXt Company Theatre’s Travelling Roadshow, a government-funded initiative for which neXt staged a series of “spontaneous moments of culture” across the Niagara Region and Toronto. “Ants in the Park” was part of the series.

Elmo and Unpacking

Many moons ago, I assisted my uber-talented and imaginative friend Vicky Mifsud-Teti on the makeup for Holly McNarland’s music video for her song, “Elmo.” In the short time that I worked as a makeup artist, it was the most rewarding job that I had. Holly was to be made up as a marionette, and it was a challenge.  Vicky came up with the genius idea to make the marionnette hands out of dental acrylic. It was a lengthy process and often frustrating, but the hands worked. 

I worked with Vicky on other jobs, and one of the many valuable things that I learned from her is that when it comes to making things, the key is being resourceful — use products for purposes that they might not be intended for — the important thing is to get the project done.

I recently moved into a new home, and while I was unpacking, I found one of the marionette fingers from the video. It’s not surprising that I hung onto it (I am a packrat, which can be a good thing if you have a big enough house), but I was happy to find it.