Puppet c. 1940

This drawing of a puppet—we don’t know when it was made—was done by the artist Hilda Olson. It's a flat rendering, but the costume is so rich and detailed that it almost tricks you into thinking it has volume. I imagine Olson carefully choosing each color, laying down each zigzag line to build up this incredible surface. There’s a real love for craft and detail here—you can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the paper, lost in concentration. The puppet, of course, is inert without a puppeteer, and it can only spring to life through an animator. But for the artist, the joy lies in the making, in the act of creation itself. In that way, Olson breathes her own life into this character. Maybe it's not so far removed from the way painters themselves are enlivened by the act of painting, channeling feeling and thought into form. Making this drawing might have been a way for Olson to bring something new into the world, and to discover something about herself in the process.