Naomi Hargraves
Naomi is a puppet maker and sculptor. Her work has been shaped by the disciplines that she has trained in: portrait sculpture, wood carving, anatomical artwork, scientific model making and model design. She enjoys working on all aspects of creating Rod Puppets and Marionettes, from wood carving and costume making to moulding and casting building. From her first clay sculptures, made at the age of eleven, Naomi has practiced getting a likeness and capturing proportions in 3D. Woodwork has always been a particular joy, and was pursued with keen interest alongside her sculptural work. She began moulding making and casting at the age of seventeen and has honed these skills throughout her degree course and into her professional career.
Puppet making has offered her the scope to delve into the many crafts that she loves. She enjoys bringing together a diverse range of materials and techniques into one cohesive design. She has no particular style or preferred material and is instead led by each project’s design requirements and aesthetics. She is interested in the communicative and educational potential of puppetry and has been inspired by Mervyn Miller’s observations on the impact of puppetry on audiences. The expansive world of puppetry and its overlap with animation offer her wide-ranging inspiration for novel designs. The value of the real-world experience of puppetry and the quality that it brings to storytelling is something that Naomi places a huge value on.
Aside from puppetry’s great impact on emotional and mental wellbeing, bringing puppetry to people is a pursuit that is driven, in part, by witnessing the decline in practical teaching of fine motor skills in young people. Naomi is passionate about the importance of tactility and its role in teaching. She teaches at degree level on a Model Design: Character and Creative Effects course. As well as character sculpture, the curriculum of this course can include the making of puppets (including stop-motion puppets), interactive museum models, props and set pieces for theatre and stop-motion. Naomi is a Fellow of Advance HE and runs workshops and demonstrations for a variety of audiences.
She was introduced to the importance of natural materials and their use by her father, a Master Thatcher based in East Anglia. The history of crafts and their respective tools is an area of fascination for Naomi that has stemmed from watching her father harvest hazel and make his own spars and tools over his forty five-year career. She has trained with Master Carver, Mike Painter, and Marionette Carver, John Roberts. Still in the early stages of her career as a puppet maker and teacher, she has been experimenting with larger scale marionettes made from wire mesh and paper mâché with natural glues, as well as rod puppets, patterned and stitched from hide and pelts. Naomi is committed to sustainability and enjoys using natural and environmentally friendly materials wherever she can.
Naomi’s latest work has been in the form of educational models. This research, which she carried out with her partner, has culminated in the form of a large bronze sculpture that teaches students complex mathematics though touch. She is now exploring the potential puppetry has for education. Her ambition is to make work that is particularly sensory. She has built some awareness of the potential use of puppetry in education by witnessing her mother’s career working with children who have special educational needs, specifically those with autism. Her ambitions for puppet making also span larger scale marionettes, shadow puppets, model theatre and stop-motion animation. She is working on patterns for marionettes that she can sell to support her ongoing experimental work within this discipline. Naomi is planning further school workshops in marionette making and hopes to bring her teaching skills to the more specific audience of puppet enthusiasts by creating demonstrations and workshops that will promote aspects of this fascinating craft.
