First Substack! Puppets and Primates Intro
Welcome to my first Substack! Here I introduce myself and my background, summarise my practice and give a bit more information about what to expect from my Substack.
Hi everyone! So, I’ve just joined Substack! If you’re receiving this in your inbox, it’s because you were already subscribed to my Mailchimp mailing list! I’m trying out moving over to Substack - it seems less formal than a regular mailing list, with the opportunity to experiment a little with format and content… and I’m nothing if not consistently inconsistent!
For any new subscribers, or people that don’t really know me, I’ll just say a bit about myself and my background. I’m Daisy, a visual artist and puppeteer. I make my own puppet shows (often collaborating with my partner in life and crime, Ulysses Black), make art work from cardboard, and make little books, too. I grew up in sunny Dartford (yep, the Dartford tunnel… well obviously not actually in the tunnel, but that’s the most notable thing about Dartford… that and Mick Jagger). I was the second of four, and was the odd arty one - painfully shy and anxious, spending most of my time by myself drawing pictures and making up little stories. I moved to Brighton in 2006 for uni where I studied Fine Art Painting, and I recently moved to Newhaven.
I cut my performance teeth while working at Bom-Bane’s in 2010 - a wonderful little music cafe in the centre of Brighton, run by the magnificent Jane Bom-Bane, storytelling-song and mechanical hat lady. I’m not musical at all, but I started off there washing dishes, and, as with everyone who spends any substantial amount of time at Bom-Bane’s, ended up shyly joining in with Jane’s original folk musicals. I’d already started making puppets, and not long after I started working there, Jane suggested I put on a puppet show, writing it in her diary so I was committed. I never expected I’d ever be a performer, but suddenly there I was, putting on a tiny show about an orangutan who falls in love with a human man, and ends up tearing the face off his girlfriend and wearing it as a mask in order to seduce him.
Bom-Bane’s definitely helped forge my life path, and has had the biggest influence on me as an artist. I even lived there for a while with Jane, washing dishes for my rent. Please visit this cafe if you haven’t already. Also, Bom-Bane’s is on Substack if you’d like to follow it!
Anyway, back to that orangutan story… Around the time I started working at Bom-Bane’s, I did an evening class with artist Isobel Smith, where I learned to make a life sized puppet. I, of course, made an orangutan, complete with bonnet and dress. She is pictured in this post, performing with me. I’d had the idea I’d make the orangutan-wearing-human-face story into a large scale puppet show at first, so my big orangutan was based on this character. Also, though, she was based on something else - an imaginary orangutan I had as a child. Nowadays, she represents even more than that. When I first made her, I was disappointed in her ugliness and her ungainliness, though now I absolutely love her and she’d be the first thing I’d save in a fire. I will, at some point, do a whole post about her because, as I just said, she’s come to represent a lot of things.
Which leads me to this: let’s address the elephant in the room - I love primates. As you can probably tell. I have done since I was a child. They are my biggest muses and always have been - ever since I made the world’s smallest monkey from FIMO, the size of my fingernail, holding an even teenier banana. This love really started in the nineties when I met Tufty - a little capuchin monkey cruelly held captive in the garden of a local dive pub we used to go to as kids. That’s a story for another post, though.
As well as primates, I generally love folklore and history, and these things often feature in my puppet shows. More info about my previous work can be found on my website: daisyjordan.co.uk
So, back to Substack. My rough plan is to post something every week - little updates on puppet projects I’m working on, current inspirations, ideas, works in progress, even the odd bit of monkey folklore, information or story. At some point, I’m going to turn on paid subscriptions for anyone that may want to support in that way, in exchange for exclusive content - at the moment, I think this content will be even more detailed posts about my process, little tutorials, or deeper glimpses into bigger projects I’m working on. I’ll keep at least 50% of posts free, though, and I’ll let people know when I turn on paid subscriptions if anyone is interested. Please bear with me while I get used to this new interface - Computer stuff isn’t my biggest strength!
I’m very excited about this, and I’m so glad to have you along for the ride! If you are reading this and are not a subscriber, and would like to be, please click on the subscribe button 🙂
Thanks so much!!
Love, Daisy xx