introducing peter slight

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Peter Slight is an artist and maker who once wrote to me at the Artlog to ask whether I’d ever worked on the ‘ghost house’ of a certain amusement park. This question came as a bit of a surprise, because although there’s never been anything at the site to indicate I’d contributed to it, Peter had recognised something in my work that put him onto my trail. I confessed that I had been head designer on the attraction, and moreover had written the scenario and script for it too. Peter had long been a big fan of it, and thereafter we had a substantial e-mail correspondence about my work on the project. I dug out quite a stack of the original character designs for him, together with photographs of the work in progress at the studio where everything had been made. I think that one day Peter intends to write about the ghost house, but for the present it must remain shrouded in the shadows of my past. Please, ask no questions. Lips are sealed!

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Since contacting me, Peter Slight has been a regular here at the Artlog, often leaving comments. During the recent posts I made on making a ‘cyclops’ glove-puppet, it was Peter who suggested a puppet-themed on-line exhibition, and I’ve agreed. This will be the third online exhibition at the Artlog, the first having been a call for maquettes, and the second, an exhibition for which contributors designed alphabets.

Peter will curate and run the event, and both of us have ideas about what we might make for it. We’re having quite a long run-up to it because it may take contributors some time to prepare their work. But we hope that this being such a process-driven challenge, makers might regularly share their progress with us in descriptions and images that Peter will post at the Artlog as we move toward the event. Submissions for the exhibition can be as complex as marionettes, or as simple as finger-puppets or toy-theatre-style paper cutout characters. Peter and I will also be compiling some puppet-themed posts, to offer inspiration.

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Peter’s delightful three-dimensional work (see above) focuses quite strongly on the folkloric, and he’s suggested a folklore/mythology/fairy-tale driven theme for the puppet exhibition. But I shall leave it to him to formally make the call for submissions and give you the details. For now I’ll just add this link to a puppet I built back in June for The Mare’s Tale, the experience of which reawakened my life-long obsession with all things puppety. Perhaps for some of you, too, making a puppet will change the way you think and work. And that’s got to be a good thing, right?

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