Susan Simpson sees puppetry as the path by which she can pursue her interests in the uncanny and the sublime. "In puppetry both the puppeteer and audience make an extreme effort to maintain an illusion of life," Simpson has said. "This illusion is a fragile agreement, which speaks poignantly to how we construct and prop up images of ourselves and each other. On the flip side there is an unsettling rupture between one's faith in animation and the obvious deadness of the puppet. It is in this rupture that I find the uncanny with all its power to unnerve and disorient." One of her most recent works, Pseudoflora, a marionette play performed at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in 2001, explores notions of the sublime in both nature and in urban ruins, which come together in the Los Angeles landscape. Simpson graduated from Brown University in visual art and received her master's degree from CalArts in experimental animation. Before coming to CalArts, she worked with a marionnette troupe in Seattle and directed and designed experimental puppet productions. She is currently teaching at CalArts and in the CAP puppetry program at Plaza de la Raza for the Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts.

Spit Shine Glisten, 2003
Wood; dimensions vary
photos by Joe Notaro