About

Mat works from his home workshop in Portland, Oregon. The building is a peculiar garage built in 1927 that has been lovingly modified for use as a puppet workshop, knifemaker's lair, blacksmith's forge, and carpenter's playground.

Marionettes

Mat's marionettes generally begin with a knife and a scrap of wood. From there, the puppet's head, body, hands, feet, legs and arms are carved, engineered to move together, re-carved to accommodate the realities of string-puppet kinesiology, and finally assembled using screws, wire, screw-eyes and/or fabric joints. From there, Mat will make a mold of the wooden parts and cast new versions of each body part out of an extremely durable resin. The newly cast resin parts are then re-carved, modified and embellished and mixed with other potential body parts (whether new, original carvings, parts cast from other puppets, found objects, etc) to create a new little creature. Each puppet is therefore highly customized and requires unique engineering and modification to complete assembly. Once assembled, the parts are primed, painted and clear-coated for maximum durability. Finally, the completed creature receives its strings and traditional two-hand controller.