A stylish bat, a melancholy sun, and the spring spirit of seasonal allergies are just a few of the characters conceived by Cat Johnston. The London-based illustrator and model maker draws on childhood memories, folk art and nature to create expressive sculptures and puppets that inhabit dreamlike realms.
Drawing on historical costumes and cartoonish sensual faces, Johnston’s otherworldly cast looks at once familiar and alien, as if the protagonists of a children’s book have suddenly come to life or become one with a strange dream. Recent figures include, rather inconveniently, a series of gods representing sunburn, hay fever and insomnia –yes Sun, flowers and moon.
Johnston recently collaborated with stop-motion animator and puppeteer Joseph Wallace on her first short film, titled “The Wickywock and the Jubjub Berry.” When a mysterious woodland creature falls into insomnia, forest spirits appear with what appears to be a practical solution, but things don’t quite go as planned.
Every year on the first weekend of May, there is a local pagan festival called the Hastings Traditional Green Jack, and Johnston will hold a small solo exhibition at a local pub called The Crown. In addition to being signed as a director by London film studio Passion Pictures, the artist continues to explore the possibilities of film.
Johnston is currently working on some ideas for an animated series and hopes to develop a slightly longer-form stop-motion animation project, while also working on another short film, “which will be a hybrid of live-action puppets and stop-motion animation, and will feature two flower monsters and an incredibly cute bee,” she said.
You might also like Roberto Benavidez’s eccentric characters inspired by Hieronymus Bosch.
