Sugar Shack Jack

When I worked at Clay & Paper Theatre, we built giant puppets all the time.

I assumed that when we moved to Small Pond that we’d continue doing the same. But such hasn’t really been the case – there are always too many other projects and not enough hours in the day. All this to explain why it took more than a year to complete our latest giant puppet, Sugar Shack Jack.

Milé's original sketch

The idea for this puppet arose when we were asked to participate in an event in Wellington as part of the 2011 Maple in the County, our region’s annual celebration of the sweet syrup. 

Milé and I sculpted the head out of cardboard which we stapled together with a creech; a “creech” is so-called because it looks like a creature. For some reason most of the world calls this tool by the very boring name of "staple pliers." Rounded bits like the nose, eyebrows and bottom lip were made out of old couch stuffing and masking tape.

The giant cardboard head barely fit through the doors of the Wellington Arena, but thankfully we squeezed him in and I spent the day getting kids to help me papier-maché this big guy. It was great fun.

Me and my puppet slaves - er - helpers...

...And then poor Jack spent the next year languishing in our garage…

At some other point in time, I built this giant pair of hands, originally to go with a different puppet. Using a box cutter I carved the fingers out of an old pool noodle and masking taped the pieces together, then taped on some cardboard to serve as the hand. 

I papier-machéd the hands and I'm really freaking happy with how they turned out. These hands are spectacularly strong and lightweight. I screwed a wooden crossbar inside each of them which act like handles, and tied a long strip of fabric between them so I can wear the hands like mittens on a string; this is a very handy feature, if you'll pardon the pun, as I can let my puppet hands dangle if I need to use my real hands to have a drink, itch my nose, and so forth.

Spring 2012 rolled around and Jack was on my mind.  I thought I should really get him finished – so I booked us a gig with him.  Nothing like a deadline to put things in motion. I finished up the papier-maché and adjusted the contraption to make this puppet wearable. It was a bit of a brain-buster, but we eventually figured it out.

The backpack with a foam sandwich on top

We bolted a couple of 1” x 1” pieces of wood to an old aluminum backpack frame. At the end of these two pieces of wood we screwed a flat piece of plywood – and between the lumber and the plywood we put this piece of old foam. The puppets sits like an upside-down cup on top of this wood/foam sandwich on sticks. It’s kind of weird but it totally works – this is a surprisingly light and comfortable puppet (as far as giant puppets go, that is).

Milé gave Jack a nice a paint job, and I worked out a costume that would fit right over the backpack. I affixed a piece of thin black fabric over the hole in the mouth; this is where the puppeteer looks out, and the visibility is not too bad.

Jack had his debut at Hike for Hospice in Picton this past weekend, which raised funds for Hospice Prince Edward. A good time was had by all in support of this great cause.

And the winners are...

To celebrate the second anniversary of Small PondArts, we decided to have a giveaway. We asked entrants to tell us about their proudest accomplishments over the last two years. I loved reading these entries;  they were so deeply personal and reminded me how each of us defines success in a completely unique way. I think it’s important to reflect upon our accomplishments and to celebrate them, and would like to extend a big “thank you” to everyone who entered for inspiring us with their personal reflections, and for everyone's kind words about our anniversary.

Look up... look way up... view from inside the silo

So without further ado, the winners as selected by random.org are…

First Prize Winner: CLINTON wins a custom oil portrait of himself or someone of his choosing by Milé Murtanovski

Second Prize Winner: ERIN JOHNSTON wins a Yeti puppet by yours truly, Krista Dalby

Third Prize: MICHELLE (Thunderpeep Designs) wins two CD's from our friend, Arlene Bishop: Snarky Girlpop and Begin Again.

Congratulations!  If you are one of these fine folks please contact us to make arrangements to receive your prize: info(at)smallpondarts.ca

If you would like to read the contest entries they can be seen here and here. Perhaps you'll even want to make a list of your own accomplishments, and discover that the built-in prize is a warm fuzzy feeling.

A Time for Renewal

Milé and I just returned from an epic road trip, a five-week getaway that led us through ten states to the desert heart of Arizona.

Admittedly, it seems a bit strange to feel the need to escape when you are lucky enough to live in paradise, like we do. But come January, when paradise is frozen over and there is no apparent end in sight, it was time for us to get away and pursue some sunshine... and sunsets.

We had a gorgeous house to call home for the month in Mesa, just outside of Phoenix, so we loaded up the van with easel and canvases, sewing machine and puppet supplies, laptop and flip flops, and made a beeline for the border. Our timing couldn’t have been worse. Within the first day we were in the grip of the ‘Storm of the Century’ that was ravaging the United States. First we encountered an ice storm, which left our van covered in an inch of ice. We passed through St. Louis at rush hour, where the weather had completely shut the city down, leaving it eerily abandoned. On the highway, we passed car after car in the ditch. Then we started seeing the road signs that you never want to see: “UNSAFE ROAD CONDITIONS: SEEK SHELTER”. From our cheap hotel room in Springfield, Missouri, we watched the weather channel with dismay. The road we’d been planning on taking was closed. We chose a detour through the Ozark Mountains, which turned out to be a taste of wonder; the roads were mercifully clear and dry, but the bare trees were encased in ice; when the sun shone through them it was pure magic.

But it was a brief respite – through Oklahoma the roads were ridiculously dangerous, so we made an unscheduled overnight stop in Seminole. The next day we finally left the snow behind and entered the charming desert landscapes of New Mexico.

The drive down was not exactly a relaxing start to the trip, but we were so much the happier to arrive at our destination. After a first day of pure, blissful relaxation, we quickly got into a routine. Milé painted four paintings while we were there, including this gorgeous Arizona landscape:

'Near Lake Saguaro' -  36" x 48", oil on canvas, 2011, sold

I wrote an article for an upcoming issue of Horntrip Magazine, and penned a puppet show and a half. I sewed the image for this year's new silo banner (can you guess what it is?):

I also made 20 puppets in 4 different styles for an exhibition I have coming later this spring.

It was our first vacation in more than 2 years, so we didn’t forget to indulge ourselves. We went swimming. We ate in restaurants. We wandered around the desert and explored the art galleries of Scottsdale, and visited the Great Arizona Puppet Theater for an unforgettable puppet slam.

Puppet on display at The Great Arizona Puppet Theater

We were incredibly productive because of the lack of distractions. A few weeks ago, we celebrated one glorious year of living at Small Pond, and we love it completely, but when we’re at home there is always a mile-long to-do list; here we were free from all those responsibilities. We had the time and the space to work at our own speed, took breaks when we wanted, read books and watched movies. When you love what you do, it’s no hardship to work while you’re on vacation. But it’s also important to take time for yourself to do nothing, to let your brain relax and your thoughts meander with no purpose. I think that on this trip we found the perfect balance between work and play, and we’ve come home renewed, refreshed, and ready to dive in to all the great things that 2011 has in store for us.

Stunning Sedona

When we returned home a few days ago to our beloved Small Pond, I felt really good knowing that this place can provide just such an opportunity of renewal to other artists. All they need to do is make the time and we can give them the place to work, relax, find inspiration and refuel their creative engines; and take my word for it - renewal is a beautiful thing.



Two relaxed, happy artists visit the Grand Canyon



Bet you wish you knew a Guy like him‏

We’ve mentioned Guy Doucette in a number of previous posts, and with good reason. Guy is living with us at Small Pond all summer, and he has been an invaluable help to us in this important first year of pond life.

I met Guy three years ago while I was working at Clay & Paper Theatre. I was leading a stilt-walking workshop, and he showed up to learn how it was done on the same day that we were joined by a journalist from the National Post. A few days later, Guy’s picture showed up in the newspaper under the headline “They Just Want to Get High.” A-hem.

Guy makes sand angels at Sandbanks Provincial Park

From this unusual beginning, Guy and I became fast friends and artistic collaborators. He spent a year working with me as an intern at Clay & Paper, where I tried to impart some of my knowledge of producing to him – although he’s been producing his own festivals and plays with Back Burner Productions for years. Guy and I have developed and performed a number of shadow puppetry plays together: Dreams-A-Go-Go, Leap Year Pudding, and Wolf/Flow. Right now we're working on our next shadow show, Doubt Seed, which we’ll be performing at Small Pond in August.

So what does Guy do at Small Pond, you might ask?

Guy gardens, he cooks, he plays guitar, cuts trails through the woods, and makes sculptures out of the plethora of found objects that turn up around the farm.

Guy's scarecrow has been mighty effective in fending off critters

He’s continues to be a stilt-walker...

… and is also a bat-catcher…

... a puppet-maker...

… a snake-handler…

… and generally just helps out with whatever needs to be done. He’s got a killer sense of humour, inimitable fashion sense, a ready laugh, and is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met. You couldn’t ask for a more devoted friend.

Guy's crowning achievement this summer has been the creation of what we call Salon du Silo, an elaborate landscaping and gardening project which involved unearthing the floor of the long-gone hundred-year-old barn next to the silo. The Salon is now one of the most magical spots on our property.

Now don’t you wish you knew a Guy like him?

Birthing Bacchus

Let me introduce you to the newest member of the Small Pond menagerie: Bacchus. Bacchus, meet our blog readers.

Bacchus is a giant puppet – 10 ½ feet tall when I’m wearing him – and today he made his first public appearance at Picton’s Canada Day celebrations.

And who is this ruddy-cheeked, swaggering giant? Bacchus is none other than the Roman god of wine, theatre, and agriculture; all most worthy domains to preside over. We thought he’d fit right in around here with all the wineries and farms in Prince Edward County… as well as with the tribe of theatrical heathens here at Small Pond.

I’m going to give a basic step-by-step of how we made Bacchus… but first you might be wondering why on earth we would put so much time and energy into creating such highly impractical, nonsensical things like giant puppets. I can really only blame one person: David Anderson.

Four years ago, Milé and I moved in together into the tiny third floor apartment of a house in Toronto (the aforementioned shoebox). As it turned out, David lived on the main floor. I knew him to be the Artistic Director of Clay & Paper Theatre, and being a playwright and fledgling puppeteer myself, I naturally suggested that we have dinner and talk theatre. Thus it was that a few days later we rendezvoused on the front porch for a barbecue. David was in a right state. He had a show going up in a month and his producer had just quit. As luck would have it, I’d just quit my job. By the time we were tucking into our meal, I’d been hired.

David Anderson toasts a cabeçudo (giant head puppet)

 in the first production we worked on together

This month-long contract at Clay & Paper turned into four crazy years of writing, producing, performing, workshopping, stilt-walking, and yes, building all sorts of puppets, both great and small. I have to thank David for teaching me almost everything I know about puppets. He was a great mentor and I have many fond memories of working with him in the years before starting Small Pond. In addition to my puppet pedigree from Clay & Paper, I also had the great fortune of doing a 5-week internship at Bread & Puppet Theater in Vermont, an experience that not only further informed my knowledge of puppetry, but in fact inspired us to start a ‘puppet farm’ of our very own.

Bacchus was born from the outhouse, in a sense. When we dug the pit for the Small Pond outhouse, we were happy to discover a vein of clay which we hauled away in buckets for later use. The first step of the process involved reconstituting the clay by adding water to it. Once it had returned to a fairly squishy state, I dumped it out on a big table and started sculpting with my hands.

It took a while for me to get a shape I was happy with, and I often had to stand on a ladder above the sculpture to get a sense of what it looked like. I then had to let the clay dry out for a few days– once it had solidified I smeared the whole thing in Vaseline and started papier-mâchéing with the assistance of Nel, a visiting playwright, and our friend Guy.

Nel and Krista papier-mâché

Meanwhile, in Oshawa, my sister Caitlin and my grandmother Marion had been sucked into the puppet vortex, and in between cups of tea and games of Scrabble they were cutting out 175 grape leaves based on the template I provided them. I love you two!

When the papier mâché was dry, I popped it off the form, the Vaseline forming a barrier to prevent the paper from sticking to the clay. I reinforced the edges of the face with wire. Guy and I screwed some cross beams into the head, then I primed the face, inside and out, and handed it over to Milé for painting.

Bacchus is nothing without his grapes. I made each grape individually, sewing little bundles of stuffing into two colours of purple fabric. The grapes I sewed into bunches, the bunches I sewed onto leaves, and the leaves I stitched onto the head. I filled in some gaps with strips of dark green fun fur – I feel they look like vines and it really works well in adding another texture. I also used a bit of gold highlighting throughout – ribbons, sequins, gold leaves – which I thought would lend itself to his godliness as well as providing a bit of good old fashioned sparkle.

All this time I was debating what to do with the hands. Sculpting them in clay would take too much time, so I opted for my patented Frankenstein technique. The hands are made out of a cut-up pool noodle found in our woods and a bit of junk Styrofoam. It’s all held together with masking tape and a couple layers of papier mâché. The wine bottle is similarly made of some cut-up plastic pop bottles and a cardboard tube, again covered with masking tape and papier mâché.

Bacchus is a backpack puppet – this particular backpack I found on the street in Toronto (I'm an avid freecycler).  It is a Pioneer Indian Pack Board No. 3. Not totally comfortable by modern standards, but I enjoy the design of it. Its wooden frame made it easy to bolt it to two pieces of 2” x 2” wood which go straight up and bolt onto the cross beam in the head. The key to keeping control of the puppet is a snug strap across the waist and the chest. This particular backpack didn’t come with such straps, so I bought some 1” buckles and some strapping at Canadian Tire.

Milé designed the Small Pond Estates wine label

For Bacchus’ costume I decided to try something a little different; instead of the traditional giant puppet costume consisting of a large tube of fabric covering the operator and two tubes for the arms, I decided to go more conceptual and use fabric strips. I knew that I was often going to be the one carrying the puppet, and chose to make my own costume part of the larger costume – really, I was just looking for an excuse to wear gold combat boots! 

Bacchus is the first of many giant puppets we’ll be building at Small Pond. If you’d like to get involved in helping us make one, please get in touch – they are big projects and volunteers are always welcome. Until next time, may Bacchus continue to watch over you, and may your cup runneth over!