For more than half his life 43-year-old Sol has been travelling the country making puppets and exhibiting them at festivals, and for the past six years, his partner in crime has been an ex Canadian gal called Sara. Last weekend they visited Walcha to be part of the inaugural Bobby Jack’s Festival where they also held a puppet making workshop.
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“I went to study visual arts at uni straight from high school, and you don't tend to learn a lot that way,” he said.
“I dropped out pretty quickly and ended up living with a potter and a drum maker – both of whom set up a gallery in the Adelaide Hills.”
Sol says he was living and working surrounded by clay.
“One day I found myself making a face out of the clay, and I thought to myself if I make hands and feet I can make a marionette,” he said.
“I made my first puppet, which took me about two weeks, and in the course of making it, I had about twenty ideas for other puppets. So when I finished making the first one, I immediately started making another five, and it started snowballing from there.”
The first ‘Squeaking Tribe’ exhibition was held in 1996 when Sol travelled from Adelaide to Queensland and went to the Woodford Folk Festival.
“At the end of the festival I met a man who said he was opening a gallery in the Blue Mountains and he bought everything I had left,” Sol said. “I only had twelve puppets to my name, but he bought them all and signed me a cheque for 800 dollars, and I basically went back to Adelaide waving that cheque saying I’m going to be a puppet maker.”
Sol has been on the road ever since, and he says the couple make enough money to keep themselves doing what they love and that they get rewards which have nothing to do with money.
“You don’t really need to make much money. I’m not saving for a house or a yacht or anything like that,” he said. “It’s all about the experience – the nicest thing about making a puppet is finding it a home. Seeing that joy when a person has found something they love. Every sale we make is exactly like that. Nobody buys from us, or even stops and talks to us, who doesn't have an inner child that is looking for something to love - so we live in a kind of bubble of positivity, which is not a horrible thing.”
Part of his inspiration is showing people what can be done with just two people on the road, and touring regionally says, Sol.
“Capital cities have got a lot going on, and if we lived in Melbourne or Sydney we’d slip through the cracks pretty quickly,” he said. “But out here we can make a much bigger splash and inspire people who have never seen anything like this before. It’s a big country, and there are a lot of people out there.”
See also
Vanessa Arundale
Everyone has a story to tell and I like to help them do it.
Everyone has a story to tell and I like to help them do it.
