Dark Friends Series
Hobey Ford
Interviewing artists for this newsletter has given me great pleasure, but it was especially delightful to visit recently with renowned puppeteer Hobey Ford in his home studio here in Western North Carolina.
Walking through the two-story workshop was like visiting a museum. Fifty-plus years of Hobey’s life as a craftsman and performer were on display, and I was enthralled.
Hobey can make his creations come to life with the flick of a wrist. He showed me, to my wide-eyed amazement, how the motions of an otter, a whale, and to some degree even an eagle, can come from similar circular hand movements.
Hobey’s puppets are so lifelike they’re almost frightening. If Hobey had shown me zombie puppets or possessed ventriloquist dummies, I might have run screaming from the studio.
Well, hold on. To be honest, I’d have loved that, too.
(Image below: Hobey shows me how he makes the rod puppet of this wolf simulate running.)
But Hobey’s creations really weren’t frightening; they were beautiful and magical. His workshop was a fantasy land because of all the gorgeous miniatures: Chinese emperors, indigenous whalers, dancing elves–even a tiny Joni Mitchell playing a dulcimer in her little box of paints. (Fans will get the reference.) And there are larger puppets, too, just as fascinating, of birds of prey, whales, and of course, people.
There was far too much in this visit to share all of it with you in this newsletter. Not just the puppets and stage props, but the stories Hobey told me about his past and of his incredible ancestors. Someone needs to make a full documentary about Hobey’s life!
If you’ve ever seen Hobey Ford perform or been thrilled by any good puppeteer, I trust you’ll find the following discussion as fascinating as I did.
The Interview
When did you know that puppetry would be your life’s work?
It came to me in a flash, New Year’s Eve, 1976. I was in art college and became discontented with the visual art of the 1970s. The art that was popular seemed intellectualized, lacking any aesthetic value. I closed my eyes to imagine what would I could do next.
Clear as a bell and out of nowhere, I imagined the face of Paramahansa Yogananda as a marionette. I had just read his book, Autobiography of a Yogi. I made puppetry an independent study for the rest of the year.
I traveled West and landed in a Native American community. Not long after that, my mentor, Clyde Hollifield, arrived there and I moved to Pleasant Gardens near Marion, NC to learn from him. He was a self-taught puppeteer and master of miniature rod puppets.
(Image: Portrait of Clyde Hollifield holding a miniature banjo in a bottle, one of his myriad creations. Coming soon: an interview with Clyde and his delightful wife Adrienne)
Most of the artists I interview have a day job to keep them going physically while pursuing their art on the side. From what I understand, puppetry has been your sole career. Have there been challenging times in your professional life that made you question whether you could do this as a career?
Clyde told me at the start that if I took a day job, I would never stay with puppetry. He taught me to carve and make crafts to sell. I also played music at McDibbs in Black Mountain.
I had a $25-a-month rent so it was no sweat. Puppetry has supported me well for forty-two years. It has only been during this time of Covid that I have struggled on and off with finances. Horror and science fiction filmmakers have approached me during the pandemic to build and sometimes perform in their films.
(Photo: Hobey and his wife Sue in their early days near Asheville, NC)
Who are some of the other artists who have influenced and inspired you the most?
My inspiration early on was Bil Baird, creator of “The Lonely Goatherd” in The Sound of Music movie. His theater performances didn’t excite me so much as his puppets.
(Photo: Rod puppet Quagmire Ankledeep, a character created in 1978 modeled after Hobey’s mentor Clyde Hollifield)
My inspiration early on was Bil Baird, creator of “The Lonely Goatherd” in The Sound of Music movie. His theater performances didn’t excite me so much as his puppets.
When I introduced myself to him in 1976 at his theater after a show, he said, “You are from Rowayton, CT? I knew your grandfather Hobey.” He spent an hour and a half with me in his studio showing me the basics of marionette making. He let me try a marionette of his on the high bridge above his stage. The marionettes were so well-crafted that I could feel their energy up the strings. They oozed life!
Then I met Clyde, of course, and he was a great inspiration in rod puppetry.
Later I was inspired by Jim Henson’s work on The Dark Crystal and especially the illustrations of Brian Froud. I tried to get a job on the film and met Froud. I showed him a small elf rod puppet inspired by one of his drawings in his Faeries book.
That day I met Henson’s main engineer who showed me a lot of the materials and techniques he used on Dark Crystal puppets.
I also noticed a Henson builder carving foam rubber to go inside a Big Bird foot. She showed me her techniques. I had been interested in carving foam and now had some guidance about how to go about it. I had a very productive period after that day, expanding my puppet-building knowledge beyond what Clyde had shown me.
Nature became my inspiration then as I started carving realistic foam animals. I have also been inspired by the storytelling community and consider myself a storyteller with puppets.
You create and perform with a variety of puppets–shadow puppets, rod puppets, and “foamies.” I imagine they each have their own advantages and challenges. Do you have a favorite type of puppet?
I like teaching shadow puppetry because it is the easiest to teach for non-craftsmen.
I have loved foam rubber puppets most of my career, but lately it has been miniature rod puppetry–where I began–which excites me most.
(Note from DAV: The beauty and power of Hobey Ford’s shadow puppetry can be seen in the Avett Brothers video “Bring Your Love to Me.” Click the link to view the video from which the image above was taken.)
Large puppets are especially fascinating to me. What are some of the larger puppets you’ve made, and would you consider making more?
I built a dragon for a UNCA production of The Hobbit years ago which was my largest puppet at thirty feet long. It was really fun working with the actors who puppeteered him.
I am really not interested in building any more giant puppets. I like them, but I prefer small puppets.
As a puppeteer, you have to become almost one with the puppet. When you create the movement for an eagle or an otter, your movements seem as fluid as a dancer’s. When you are performing for a live audience, do you ever get lost in the story?
I am always keenly aware of my audience. Since I began I have loved to take my performance into the audience. It is there where interaction becomes the life of the show.
The story is always important, but it is the life that you and the audience imagine that becomes the soul of puppetry.
Which do you prefer to do, live performances or pre-recorded ones?
I prefer live performance for my “foamies.” But puppet film excites me as well.
I would like to move toward film with these smaller puppets. Pre-recorded videos of puppetry falls flat unless it is specifically produced for video.
(Photo above: Ichabod Crane puppet used in Hobey’s stage adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Hobey’s original 50-minute stage performance was edited down to a 7-minute movie for a Halloween-themed collection of films produced by Heather Henson (puppeteer daughter of Muppet creator Jim Henson) called Handmade Puppet Dreams. Ichabod is carved from holly rather than foam.)
Do you have a memory that you cherish as perhaps a favorite performance?
Around 1987 I first performed my foamies at a National Festival in a puppet slam sort of setting. The audience went nuts. No one had seen this type of performance before, with this type of puppet.
Suddenly I got work offers from around the US and Jim Henson saw film of this work and began funding productions, three in all. My career took off that day.
Most creators, I imagine, love their craft but still have some aspects of their work that they don’t enjoy. For me, it’s editing. Is there anything about puppetry that you don’t like or that you find unpleasant?
Puppetry requires so many different skills and materials it can be chaotic. I enjoy some of that variety though things do become cluttered. I don’t enjoy dealing with all the stuff that I have to deal with and accumulate. It’s hard to get rid of it but then I have to store it.
Things can go wrong in live performances, and puppetry seems like it would be especially prone to mechanical failures. Do you have any memories of shows that turned out to be a nightmare for you?
In real life things go wrong and you can deal with them. So many things have gone wrong in performances, but I dealt with them.
It is in dream time that I have nightmares of things going wrong. I have to wake myself up from these dreams.
Is there a dark side at all to any of your puppets or shows? Do you ever seek to entertain by providing a bit of a scare?
My work is mostly for children, so no.
I did get to work on a film last year called Covid Blues for NYC filmmaker Christopher Walters, who got stuck here in the NC mountains during the first lockdown. He decided to make the movie while he was here. I built a couple of creatures and performed one of them for the film.
The film is very creepy, though it is a couple of humans who are the scary ones. He is going to move to the area and I look forward to working with him more and learning more about filmmaking from him.
Would you ever consider creating a show that was designed to be scary?
I would consider it if it was a good project and the pay was decent.
I am not drawn to horror particularly. I am drawn more to beauty.
The creatures I built for Covid Blues are pretty creepy, though aesthetically I think that they are beautiful.
I loved Dark Crystal and Labyrinth because they were so well-made and had characters with heart. The scary puppets were also comic in their presentation.
I suspect that there are many adults who simply dismiss puppetry as entertainment for children. Others may think puppetry is just something of the past. What are these folks missing in regard to puppetry?
I think that people who are not inspired by puppetry have simply not experienced great puppetry. To be clear, there is a lot of low-rate puppetry out there that gives them this impression.
Puppetry is not easy. Many think so and jump in with no knowledge of the critical skills. It’s great playing with puppetry or using it in education but when it becomes a profession and they haven’t done the work or lack the skills, they do give the impression that puppetry is an inferior art form.
I am inspired by puppetry with exceedingly good craftsmanship, showmanship, story, manipulation, and purpose.
When you see a really good show it’s like no other art form. The puppets have to impress me or their presentation has to be awfully compelling if not. I have seen only a handful of those kinds of shows.
A great puppet performance has to be more than fine puppets. It has to carry you away, to mesmerize and hypnotize.
I think my work is good, but it is not up to that standard.
I do think my puppet building and manipulation are of a high standard, but I have always struggled with theatrical presentation. For that reason, my non-verbal work has been more successful.
(from DAV: I beg to differ that Hobey’s work is “not up to that standard. I’m not alone in that view.”)
Puppetry doesn’t have to be a performance, it can be a moment, away from any theater. My mentor Clyde said that his favorite performance was on a window sill for Native American children on the street in Gallop, New Mexico one Saturday night. The streets were full of drunken adults and he and his wife Adrienne saw the children and started performing. When the children tried to get the adults to look, they’d pull the puppets in. They drew up a little crowd of children and created magic.
A big part of your career has been conducting workshops to teach people how to make puppets. You have a wonderful book of how to make rod puppets, and you also teach puppet making through video. How can people find your videos or sign up for a live, online workshop?
I advertise my work on Facebook, and my book can be purchased online at Barnes & Noble and Google Play Books. Hardback versions of the book are available on Lulu.
Anyone interested in booking performances and workshops can do so through my agent at Loyd Artists. Much of my work can also be seen on my YouTube channel.
From DAV : As I was preparing to leave Hobey’s home, he showed me one last rod puppet, one of his latest projects, this incredible praying mantis.