Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Annett Mateo. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Annett, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. ther times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed.

Oh yes I do. It was one of my greatest learning experiences.
Way back I was a cubical jockey like so many of us were working in high tech. Also like so many I dreamed of getting out and doing the creative thing. I come from a creative family and it was not encouraged because everyone is a creative right!? Not by a long shot I have learned over the years.
I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do creatively back then though but new I needed time to make the transition. I worked for a large corporate/national banking chain and when women would have children they were allowed a more flexible schedule, generally 32hours/4 days a week. It was also an option to work four 10 hour days but that was not ideal. There already was not enough work to keep me entertained. So I approached my boss and basically said that I should not be penalized because I didn’t have a kid; can I have the adjusted schedule? I told them I didn’t care what day I was off, I was not looking for any adjustment in pay, just more time off. It worked they gave me Tuesdays off. Perfect. It was so great to be able to count on that day off each week. This is the part where I tell you that I studied and practiced and honed my skills until I was ready to make my big splash on the world. What I ended up doing was buying a flower shop. Cool! I know plants and I have creative/designer sensibilities – perfect. Well I didn’t do my due diligence in buying the place and it turns out I had no idea really what I was doing. So much I didn’t even know that I didn’t know. Work habits that I didn’t realize were so ineffective and that did not suit me as an entrepreneur. Industry practices that I didn’t understand. And just plain not knowing what I was doing: I bought a shop in the same zip code as the largest flower shop in the city at the time! Questions I didn’t even know to ask. There is obviously way more to the story there but I ended up closing the whole place down eight months later: a total financial loss. However: I learned SO much from that experience. I refer to that time as my business grad school. It totally effected pretty much every way that I have dealt with my work life and career decisions since. I had so much more appreciation for times when I had a boss and also much more understanding of what my personal strengths were and were not! And I have been much more successful in my endeavors since then.
We put a lot of emphasis on winning and getting it right but there is nothing like failing or losing for learning!

Annett, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a puppet designer, builder, and coach primarily for stage but occasionally for short films. Puppetry has to be the most misunderstood art/craft. Partly because creating a puppet is creating a custom piece of art. People so often think of puppets as toys and things for children which by definition means disposable, inexpensive, and most importantly dismissable. People who do puppetry professionally may perform for children but they are not children performing. It is as difficult a skill to do well as dancing or acting is. Actually generally harder than acting because it is acting through or with a puppet. It is very satisfying to coach an actor to work with a puppet and get them to really bring the character to life. It is not intuitive or a natural skill for most. My coaching also helps make sure both the actor and the puppet do not get hurt or damaged.

I had always been interested in puppetry ever since I discovered it as a kid. I didn’t connect with a puppetry community until I moved to Seattle and the connections I made there were instrumental in creating and furthering my career. I met some really wonderful and talented people then and have had some really wonderful opportunities. I have been able to work in a number of theatres across the US and my puppets are in such far flung places as China and New Zealand. From the designer point of view some times the characters are obvious such as Toto. On the other hand depending on what the directors vision is for the action, or even the over aesthetics of the play, the build of the puppet can vary wildly. Sometimes, especially with original productions finding the character or just what the puppet should be is a challenge and that can be very exciting. Deciding what movements are needed, the best materials to achieve that and making it all come together on time and look great is a wonderful job! It is especially satisfying to working as part of a design team on a production.

I had a gig where I was to build a giant puppet of the Lunar new year animal every year. In this case the organization could only pay me a stipend for materials but I had full creative control so I used those opportunities to learn and explore some new technique or material each year. These experiments, these sort of mini self guided classes, really expanded what I could offer. Even building the same puppet twice is a learning experience. It is one of the things that has kept me doing this for all these years is that there was always something to learn. That and making people smile.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Taking some thing that exists only in my head, some thing that is only a concept, and making it reality. I love the challenge of balancing and combining the aesthetic and the technical! Creating a really cool mechanism to get a wing to flap or an eye to move and then making it look great and still move well. It is sometimes a challenge to take a perfect little mechanism and cover it with fur or whatever and still have it behave like it was intended. But when it does it is wonderful. Also trying to make as much puppet movement from as inconspicuous or minimal a hand movement is a exciting challenge. Adds a little to the magic of it all. Part of all that of course is also keeping in mind how easy it is for the actor/puppeteer to operate. That is ultimately what is important because if the puppet does not move well the story telling will suffer.
Also the look on the clients face when I know that I have gotten it. That I have also been able to take what was in their head and create what they were looking for. I love the way puppets make people smile.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

This is the crux of it isn’t it: trying to explain how creativity works. I am a maker and do not understand the mental, emotional, psychological or social deeper parts of being creative. But what I can say is that for me it is an organic process. There is the part of it that is the skill that lets you actually create what is in your head: what you are being driven to make. The actual creativity though is both very personal and very ephemeral. There is no right way to do it. No one way to do it. It is a favorite joke among puppeteers that there is only one way to make or manipulate a puppet!
We have a hard time with something that is hard to quantify. It is also why we keep killing arts programs: there is no way to put metrics on art: “Student X’s art was 39% better than student Z’s”. Also there is no way to quell it: it happens anyway. Creativity will eventually out, get out, out itself, in little and big ways. And often the creative process is very individual and again personal. This can be hard to understand for those that aren’t. It is hard to give people, creatives, time and space to do things that don’t obviously produce some thing concrete or timely. I know for many of us art much more is about process than product.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Puppetlandia.com
• Instagram: puppetlandia
• Facebook: annett mateo and puppetlandia (separate accounts, puppetlandia not terribly active)
• Linkedin: annett mateo

Image Credits

All of these photos were taken by me.