hello puppet building friends, firstly i would like to wish you all a very happy new year. i'm very excited for 2009!! Obama!!

i'm uploading some photos into the gallery. these are photos of the first set of puppets i ever made. WARNING: THESE ARE absolutely NOT FOR CHILDREN OR THE EASILY OFFENDED OR THE WEAK OF HEART. 

a little bit about the puppets: I began working on these puppets whilst living in a downtrodden slum neighbourhood in Edmonton, AB, Canada. Edmonton unfortunately has an inordinate amount of homeless people. The building I was living in was flanked by a minimum security prison, a liquor store and a place offering 25 cent peep shows, to give you an idea. Homeless people and crackheads littered the streets and doorways of buildings and the narrow chasms between buildings. Discarded cars became places to turn tricks, a discarded mattress could become a temporary home for many and the parking lot of my building was a dumping ground for anything from people to needles to garbage and debris. Plastic bags floated through the air like tumbleweeds.

I was living there because i had a huge old warehouse/loft type space for very cheap, and my friends and I were running an arts collective. Because of our surroundings, the 'people in our neighbourhood' were the down-and-out sorts I described, and they became as much a topic of conversation as they did visual stimuli. My friends and I would see the same 'regulars' often; we gave them names and spoke of them with affection. But the neighbourhood, my street in particular, was seen as a threatening, dangerous dead-zone to the rest of the city; buildings were left to rot and the people with them. For many years nobody fixed anything or changed anything or did anything to help the people living - whether in a home or not - in the neighbourhood.

Somehow in my mind these 'characters' evolved and turned into the cartoon-like images of puppets. I started making puppets based on these images and eventually created a narrative around it, which would later turn into my first musical, entitled 'Don't Go Down To Boil Street'. These puppets are the residents of Boil Street. I applied for and received a full production grant from the government of Canada to produce and perform my musical, which served not as a bombastic polemic questioning 'what can be done about the homeless' but rather a cautionary tale about garbage and decay, apathy and refuse. What happens when your government cannot or will not address the needs of its people, and what it says about all of us when the garbage we shove aside and pile up around us includes discarded humans.

SO the pictures you'll see in my gallery are of some of the main characters from 'Don't Go Down To Boil Street'. Firstly there is Crups, a homeless man with no pants, one eye and only one foot. He was the first puppet I ever made! Next is Mattrik the Soiled Mattress. Mattrik was the 2nd puppet I ever made and represented the many discarded mattresses surrounding my home. Next I created Sharp Face the Pigeon Lord, a female pimp and ruler of all pigeons of Boil Street. Then I made Li'l Scurvy - the protagonist and sympathetic character in the musical who just needs some Vitamin C and his whole life would change. Li'l Scurvy was the most important and most difficult puppet to make. He took me over one month, from inception to completion. Then I made The Crapper - a talking anus and definitely the most disgusting of all the puppets.

Please don't bother looking if you are easily offended by the vulgar, ugly and filthy elements of human nature. To make the point I aim to make I had to go to extremes.   But please DO ask me as many question as you like! This is a huge project that I worked on for 2 years and continue to work on. I'd really love your feedback.

Thanks all! I hope you enjoy the photos. 

cheers, JW

I don't see the picks..

they just finished uploading! they should be in the Gallery now, in the album entitled 'Juliann Wilding'.

disturbing yet creative puppets..

Juliann,

Great work.  I can see the efforts of two years of work in the end results.  I hope folks well be able to see what I see.  I don't find them offensive at all... if anything, our reaction or inaction to these situations in the world are what I find offensive.  (Hope that last sentence made sense.)

You should be proud of what you have accomplished.

they just finished uploading! they should be in the Gallery now, in the album entitled 'Juliann Wilding'.

I think the puppets are excellent, they depict just what was intended. i don't think they are vulgar, they are just showing what many choose not to see but it really exist. I would have loved to see the show.............. I love your creative style of writing to. I could not wait to see the photos after the intro.
Thanks for sharing.

Billy D.

thanks guys! i really appreciate it.

the show was an insane amount of work. i co-wrote the script with my husband Henry, and Henry wrote all of the songs and served as Musical Director. The songs are incredible and hilarious. I also Directed the production, and we both operated puppets in it, and we made all of the sets and props ... it was intense.

i'm glad you guys aren't offended. a lot of people find the puppets really gross - The Crapper and surprisingly Mattrik in particular. Granted, when people find them gross I usually think it's pretty funny. Because I made them and thus spent so many detailed moments with each puppet, I am endeared to them all. I even think The Crapper is pretty cute. there is a secret hole under the 'mouth' where the puppeteer can push out fake poops! hilarious.

we're working on a website and some short videos that introduce each character. when i've posted them up i'll give y'all the link.

 I don't find them offensive at all... if anything, our reaction or inaction to these situations in the world are what I find offensive.  (Hope that last sentence made sense.)

Shawn, your sentence totally makes sense. And yes - I agree that the choice to look away or ignore such problems is more offensive than the sight of a poor man with no pants or a human reduced to pooping in the streets.

Hi Juliann,

nice puppets - they give the expression that is ment to be!
Thx for sharing!

Johian

Way to think outside the box. Photos were professional. Overall design is very Tim Burton meets Quinten Tarintino meets Pee Wee's Playhouse. Wow!
It's great to create whatever you feel and not to follow guidelines.

Thanks for the share