Madison Cripps ’04 claims he was unsatisfied with the isolation of his two artistic worlds — painting and drawing felt disparate from theater and dance — until he discovered puppetry, while working on a small farm in western Massachusetts.

Since then Madison has been perfecting his craft in a studio tucked away in the River Arts District of Asheville, North Carolina. With each performance Madison attempts to push the boundary of what the audience accepts as puppetry, and their comfort level. Once a puppet is fully created Madison begins to play. The puppet’s character comes from its movements. “I’m not really there. I’m just enabling something else to explore the world that they are in,” he notes.

Reflecting upon his experience at Evergreen, Madison shares, “It really opened me up to taking subjects that were seemingly different or unrelated and finding the commonality, and seeing how everything fits together,” he said. “That was also really influential.”

The Citizen Times of Asheville, North Carolina recently published an article highlighting the work of Madison Cripps. You can check out the video they made and read the full article here.