I’ve put up a few posts on here in recent months about the Puppet Challenge over on my friend Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ brilliant blog the Artlog. For the last few years Clive has occasionally hosted an open on-line exhibition on his blog, setting out a brief for contributors and showing the results in a series of posts on the Artlog.

This year the exhibition took the form of the Puppet Challenge, an idea that began after a conversations between Clive and artist friend Peter Slight. The challenge was to make a puppet, any kind of puppet, based on the theme of mythology and folklore. You can read Clive’s introduction to the project here.

Well, the deadline for contributions was the end of June this year and the challenge has generated a fantastic response, both in quality and numbers. The first results have started appearing on the Artlog and I’ve been remiss in not putting up this post with the links last week when the exhibition started. So, the first finished puppets can be seen here, and then browse the successive posts to see the contributors who have been shown on the Artlog so far.

The artists who have appeared over the last few days have produced work that I find nothing short of staggeringly good; beautiful, moving, disturbing and imaginative. For many people involved (me included) , this was the first time they had attempted to make a puppet, but the results are so accomplished you’d never guess that was the case.

Here’s a picture of the little rod puppet woodwose I made myself for the challenge, and i’m deeply humbled to be in the company of the other contributors who have made such beautiful work. Get stuck in to the Puppet Challenge posts on the Artlog, I guarantee a rewarding browse!

The woodwose