My artistic practice in puppetry parallels my studio work in many ways. Both are deeply informed by poetry and short stories, which serve as the backbone of my creations. For Puppet Lab I plan to create a horror urban legend inspired by Dakota lore, focusing on Wabaduska, the water serpent. I’ll blend elements from the original story from the early reservation era with contemporary horror themes. My performance will incorporate masks, tabletop puppetry, and a shadow cranky box into my performance.  Ultimately, I hope to bridge the gap between my puppetry and storytelling, creating a cohesive artistic vision that captivates and inspires.

My work seeks to make the invisible, visible and is driven by my experiences, memories, and curiosities. The three puppet shows I have worked on in the past year have stretched my engineering and storytelling brain in exciting ways, and through Puppet Lab I want to continue experimenting with unusual crankie constructions, pop-up puppet mechanisms, portable puppet performances, crankie tension techniques, and engaging storytelling.  I know that this process will help push me and other Puppet Lab cohort members to create a more dynamic, engaging, and fulfilling project than I could do on my own.

Our Puppet Lab project first came from the notion of how we could design the stage from the perspective of a house cat as it navigates a breakup between its human owners. We plan to make all puppets used out of  recycled cardboard, fabric scraps, paint, markers, and any other trinkets and potential garbage that we can turn into something else. Similar to how cats play with whatever is available to them, we both enjoy creating things from nothing, or from items people have left behind. Sustainability surrounding the art of puppetry works well with a project based within the world we often neglect, even within our own homes. As emerging artists, Puppet Lab offers us a space for experimentation that also draws an audience that’s looking for this type of zany show.

When I first started making art it tended to be sculptural, but I found myself discontented with the idea of making things that live in the “Look But Don’t Touch” realm. I developed a love for puppetry in response to this discontent. I am lovingly calling my proposed project "LIMBS." This piece is an exploration of the untold stories of the nameless, sometimes faceless, fractures and fragments of Frankenstein's Creature. It always troubled me that the pieces of The Creature were reduced to just being pieces rather than parts of whole people. As a result, I aim to present moments from the lives that the limbs lived before they were part of Frankenstein's Creature and how their lives intertwined.

May 9 - 18, 2025

Led by Co-Artistic Directors Oanh Vu and Sofia Padilla

PUPPET LAB is a 2-week festival of radical, genre-expanding, boundary–pushing puppet work, the culmination of a 6-month development residency for emerging puppetry and mask artists.