Sunday, July 16, 2006

Wrinkle Cream vs The MiddleEast Crisis (as illustrated with poppets), Part I

If you’re looking for the Luck’s Dancer and Poppet sale page, it’s here: Luck's Dancer

But you're welcomed to stay for the sermon...

I’m getting lots of questions about the Little Red Poppets. I’m fairly certain the following answers them all, so far.

Why poppets and not puppets?

Because lots of people insisted and persisted to call them poppets, even when I insisted and persisted to call them puppets. Ok. I caved. Still, it will help distinguish them from other puppets I make.

What they were:
Originally, the little poppets were pawns in a chess set I worked on several years ago. I decided it was the wrong time to make a chess set, and possibly the wrong universe, so I put the project aside.

I made a few for myself, and kept looking at them and listening. I began to like having them here and there, and took to leaving one or two around when visiting friends, who would call days or weeks or much later when they’d discovered them, more delighted than I would have expected.

Alone, or in little groups here and there, they invaded our spaces at home and in the studio. For me, the little poppet has come to represent that distinct and singular moment of waking. I’ve experienced it and watched it in others, as when children grasp concepts for the first time.

Sometimes this moment is joyful. Sometimes it is crushing. It is its own dichotomy, this little poppet thinking for itself. It’s an old story.

I incorporated the poppets into larger works. Lots of them. You can see several of these on the gallery page. One particular piece, Shift, (for which I must find an image for you) has 843 of the little fellows...

When I put the poppets into settings, as pieces of larger works, they become something else, though they still themselves represent a moment of realization (sometimes it’s a moment of realizing they’re in the soup!)

I find myself using them as a sort of language, stringing rows of them together like some strange alphabet.

Or pieces of a puzzle. This means something to me. Exactly what that is still unfinished and unclear.

But the search…..the search is its own engine. And my favorite playground.

I’m not done yet with poppets. I’m still working on what they are.

What they will be, I don’t know. But my favorite possibilities include many thousands of them, and movement.
At any rate, for the moment, they are mostly about paying attention.


That said, I wonder now if I could’ve said it just as well with the image below.

8 comments:

faerydusted1 said...

Lisa! I had a dream last night that while I slept Poppets roamed our house!!!
I was great disturbed. Hordes of them. They went through (well, more 'around', really) all of our things and even investigated our cats (who, oddly, didn't try even a nibble). Just kind of gliding about the house as if they were scoping the lay of the land. Doing what poppets do, I suppose. What that is, I'm still not sure. And that's the whole bothersome bit. The not knowing.

Then I got on here, and there were these posts all about the poppets and I was like 'HOLY COW'! And I wasn't sure if I should even post about it because now my dream souns so silly. (Well, ok, it was silly to begin with.)

I don't know if it was a nightmare, but more one of those dreams that I haven't been able to "shake" all morning. I had to post anyway.

Now, seeing the image with your computer screen I'm even more bothered.

I wonder what they thought about the stuff in my shower...

(The bit in my dream they were only in our kitchen and our living room. They slid right up to one of our cats who sleeps in a fruit bowl and came nose to nose with him. But I knew they were all over the house.)

Neon said...

Hi Lisa! I haven't had a dream about poppets yet, but I'm sure I will tonight after seeing that photo of them swarming around the computer!
I emailed you when the sale came up as i wanted to buy a couple of poppets but couldnt get through the paymant pages as I couldnt work out how to add the extra money for international shipping to the UK. Would appreciate a pointer!
Thanks for the poppets and for being so fab!

Rubius said...

Thank you for sharing faerydusted1... I just love the poppets... and creepy as hordes of them may be, that sounds like a great dream.

love the pics Lisa, keep em coming... just love them.

faerydusted1 said...

Rubius, I think she took your challenge to heart!
I've had a terrible, bad, horrible, awful morning. Not so bad as so many other people in the world. Just little stuff bad. But I came here and looked at poppets and other things. Thanks, Lisa. (And I apologize for the many posties..)

ravyn said...

Neon: i've tried to make the web page a little more clear. There is a paypal button located beneath the "View Cart" button that, when clicked, adds $5 (US) to the shopping cart - this is to compensate for the extra shipping charges outside the US.

When you look at the shopping cart, the entry should have this description: international shipping, small
Item #SHP01 .

Please email me (nora at ravyn dot com) if you are still having problems with the sale page.

vandaluna said...

POPPETS!! Of course they're poppets!! Witches sometimes make little poppets to absorb various sorts of energies or help promote certain energies. I alway associate poppets with fettish objects and they are usually small.

Puppets on the other hand are usually controlled by others, don't think for themselves so much and don't have power. They are not necessarily small and they are only a tool. Puppets can be nice, even cool, but they do no have the same power as a poppet.

Alchemy was hoping she would be the only one to own a single poppet. ::snicker:: Maybe we could buy her a set of them each painted in a different color of the spectrum. ;-)

ravyn said...

But that's why they are also PUPPETS!!! Because they don't think for themselves, because they don't have power. This is illustrated in pieces like Sheep, Denial, and Soft Centered.

You may be onto something with the poppet analogy though, because some of the food pieces don't have that same feel. And especially Strange Birds, which has only a single poppet, definitely doesn't have that feel....... could there be an evolution happening from puppet to poppet?

vandaluna said...

Yes, and I had considered that. But, they do not have strings. They are small self-contained units which possess their own energy no matter how humiliated they are by being placed in a processing plant.

I think, instead of being manipulated, although they sometimes let themselves be for their own reasons, they are watching, waiting, biding their time. Every once in a while, in an eerie 1984-manner, one of them will turn loose, scream, cut off its face, do something different. Sooo, you think with a first glance that they are meerly sheep...but perhaps they are trying to fool you and eventually take over. :-)