While I am finishing off Stored I have started something new. I like to have two different style of works on the go. This gives me an opportunity to choose what kind of work suits me best on the days I have time in my studio. Some days I need to do gentle stitch work and other days I can do more demanding stuff. Making art is medicine for my mind. This might sound woo woo, but after many wobbly years I have learned that making art gets me on the right foot.
Since 1989 I have been collecting Jumping Jack puppets, because “I am trying not to be one”. I wrote this on the first page of a tiny book in which I document every new addition. Not wanting to be a Jumping Jack puppet meant for me: not wanting to have my strings pulled, not having to do what I am told, but being autonomous, choosing my own path, having my own voice.
While the collection is still growing I am pondering about the meaning and movement of this puppet. Surely it is originally meant to be a jolly joker, but I think this flinging of the limbs can be interpreted in many different ways. When someone pulls its cord, does the puppet jump out of joy, or could it be fear? Or another emotion? Whatever the emotional reaction may be, the puppet has been activated by the ‘puller’.
This engagement of ‘puller’ and puppet is visualising action-reaction. It can be good, it can be not good. The meeting of two identities is determined by how the interaction unfolds, how the dynamics play out. There can be no cause and effect at all, there can be a gentle nudge from one to the other, the meeting develops into a stronger expression, or there is deactivation. Plus anything in between.
It comes down to seeing the other. Ideally, finding the same wavelength so that there is equality.
It has made me curious to explore varieties of this interaction. There is so much food for thought here, it excites me a lot. This thinking goes on in the back ground all day, and it steadily forms solid ideas. I will post more about this as the work evolves.
sources: World Encyclopaedia of Puppetry Arts; Wikipedia
