Maker Day!

So here I am in California. I was able to attend Maker Day for the Maker Faire yesterday, and met a LOT of wonderfully geeky guys and gals. Mostly guys! The makers are into programming and hacking into things, making things with gears, soldering, and dremeling which is lovely. Someone had a machine that was a tongue to lick a lollipop with the turn of a crank. A gentleman who goes by the name of Doc was telling me about his boy on a bicycle and his next goal being to animate his face. The boy's, not his own.
Another guy I met, Simran, has made (to the best of me being able to describe things) an application that uses the wonder of virtual gravity and boxes and things crashing together in pretend-space to create a symphony of music. It's a very cool app & reminds me a lot of Electroplankton by Nintendo. (Which is a lovely little "game")

When I talk to most any of the makers--especially the ones who make baby arms move by sensors in the feet, or people who are exploring using ventriloquist dummy parts to create robots-- I think about how these things can merge in the world of puppetry. Puppetry overlaps to nearly every art-form. Hackers, programmers, visual artists, fiber artists, welders, woodworkers, actors and vocalists all have their important and vital roles in puppetry. WOW. I can't wait to talk about puppetry on Sunday and how each and every person there should become involved with it in some way.

Want to see a picture of me at Maker? Yes. So silly I am. I took a trip to the Maker Shed to see my kits displayed and they were sitting right next to John Kennedy's Puppet Planet. That's pretty darn rad, if I do say.

Frogs & San Francisco

On the day before yesterday, I was asked by the good people at Make:/Craft: Magazine to go to the Maker Faire to be a demonstrator & possibly speak. Wow, what an incredibly awesome honor & opportunity! I bought my plane tickets yesterday and will go have a weekend on the town in San Francisco. Hooray! I also got the most amazing amigurumi frog in the mail from Italy yesterday. It was a little birthday gift to myself. I love it. WOW. Rosy LaWood is the artist who made the frog. The card inside the frog's messenger bag says, "please take care of me." Gosh, this frog is just so much fun! She's just begging to go to San Francisco with me!
So, really this week has been pretty darn rad.

Phillip Huber arrives to our theater next week. I think next week will also be rad. I'm in awe of marionettes and particularly his marionettes. He has really worked hard to preserve the history of puppetry. I admire him a lot.

I decided to celebrate all of these things by making myself a Shirley Temple. Mmmm delicious.

Congratulations, Stacy Wolf!

Last night I attended the screening & awards ceremony for the Independent Feature Project's 4 Season Short Film Challenge (yes, mouthful). Our film was up for Best Feature, Best Writing/Story, & Best Director. We didn't expect to walk away with anything at this point. We'd already won the Winter Challenge, but we were competing against 15 other filmmakers & their films.

While our film didn't win $1,000, we did take home a lovely Plexiglas award, given to Stacy Wolf. Ya know, usually my first name gets misspelled. This I am used to. But my last name, not so much. But they did get one letter in my last name right, so that's good!

So I suppose, to get it fixed they either need to get me a new one. I did consider finding someone with the last name Wolf & marrying him/her. Or I suppose I could have just had it changed legally without marrying anyone. Considering I'm already married & have business cards with my name on them, I decided to ask them to send me a new award. The nice thing is that I get to keep the old one, so that means I get TWO!

So I guess I'm here being ridiculous & people are liking my ridiculous. Yay for that.

I am a serious grown-up

About a half-hour ago I watched the clock change to midnight. I'm 30.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to eat cereal with no character on the box. For lunch I will eat a sandwich on whole-grain bread. I also plan to discuss my goiter with several people at a grocery store with whom I share no real connection. I'll retire to bed at 7:30pm and get up at 4am, go to the IHOP and ask for an early bird special. I will use the word elderly well more than I should.

I tell lies & that makes me happy. No. I'm happy because I immediately tattle. On myself. I'm meta.

You People Deserve To Read Something

Good golly, how many times have you checked back & nothing new had been posted? I keep feeling as though I'm on the edge of something, so I hesitate in posting because, well, something significantly rad might come up tomorrow, whereas right now nothing definite is going on & reading about maybes is boring and difficult to follow.

I've been asked to go to Toronto in May to give an improv workshop to puppeteers. Oh, man, you have no idea how excited I am about this! I geek out over both of these things so hard. I love teaching improv to people who don't really know how/what it is. The fundamentals of improvisational theater are so lovely! Anthony Fama, of Tucson's Streetprov, has often said that the fundamentals of improv would solve a lot of people's problems (to be fair, I'm sure many people have said this, however I associate it with Anthony). I believe it to be true. There are some great foundations for life. I think everyone should be required to take First Aid/CPR, Driving Lessons & at least one improv workshop from the right person. I suggest Joe Bill.

The other half of that geeking out is that I adore seeing other puppeteers doing wonderful things & I'm rarely around puppeteers that I haven't known for 6 years! Oh man, and there's another side of it: Toronto! Yay that!


(Allison, did you hear gunshots around 10:30 on Sunday night? Yeah, me too..just now)

Also, I made a cabbage. I like him.

Happy Pie Day!

I declare today the best day of all!

Second best: International Talk like o'Pirate day

Lessons from the Muppets

The Muppet exhibit at the Arizona Museum for Youth closes on Sunday, so I did one last trip today with a friend. I looked for specific things today & how I could apply them to my own work. I did find techniques that I might use, but more importantly, looking at the puppets & Jim's doodles, I realized that there's a beautiful lack of perfection to most of it.

While the puppets are well more than what I can muster, they're not the models of perfection that I had built them up to be in my mind, from television, or from the initial exhibit visit, at which I was just amazed to be in the same room as these great works of art (not to mention Dave Goelz).

This time around I was looking for imperfections and I found them. Just like I can for anything in life, especially my own work. While I won't ever be content with my work, seeing all of these wonderful imperfections from people so highly revered encouraged me to go a little easier on myself.

I think the perfection that has been built up in my mind was due to the excitement & energy that Jim Henson & his cohorts put into it all. I've got that...holy crap, I've got that! So I'm just going to go with it. I'm not going to worry about what so-and-so might think....My own style & better building will come with time & with practice. I don't need to be perfect, I just need to do what I'm doing with the joy that it brings me. And if that doesn't make me successful, then I'll be having too much fun with what I'm doing to know that I'm miserable, right?

Just because I like to throw in photos, my carrot army is at the top there...its me..having fun with what I do!