Sarah Davidson, Camouflage as Organic Defence, watercolour, ink and pencil crayon on paper, 31 x 48.5 in, 2021
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A drawing made up of dense, cross hatched line work depicts lily pads, butterflies and eyeballs woven together to create a dense field of intersecting elements. The muted colour palette of red, blue, black and yellow creates a murky swamp of elements. Elements intersect to create movement and the appearance of floating.
Sonja Ratkay, Salad in the Bloodstream, Organza, wool roving, thread and metal dowels, 55 x 100 in, 2021
Photography by Edwin Isford
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A large pink, sheer, layered, and shimmery tapestry is shown installed hanging from the ceiling in a room. The tapestry depicts an abstracted body silhouette, and a vein-like shape inside of this form is stuffed with wool roving elements, which make it puffy. The tapestry, which is taller than a person, is meant to function as a room divider or space definer for the lounge.
Mel Thibodeau, Nest, mixed fabrics and foam, 36” x 36” x 6”, 2021
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Photos of a large circular pillow sculpture that functions as a seat. The seat is constructed from foam and upholstered with multi-textured and variously-coloured fake furs, as well as a holographic fabric. The image created by the fabrics resembles a large yellow egg in a colourful nest. It is stuffed so that the elements are raised and puffy.
Juli Majer, Untitled, mixed fabrics and polyester stuffing, 2’ x 2’ x 4”, 2021
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Photos of a multi-textured, oversized seat cushion made of soft fleece and fake fur. The cushion is quilted in a way which resembles the texture of a brain.
Sonja Ratkay, Squatting IntuitiveInk drawing on paper, 9 x 12 in, 2021 and Soft Shell, Ink drawing on paper, 9 x 12 in, 2021
Photography by Edwin Isford
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Set of two black ink drawings on white paper, of identical dimensions. The first drawing depicts an abstracted squatting figure. Hand drawn text wraps through the figure’s legs and reads: “MOON LIT PLEATS PETAL DENTED SLEET”. The second drawing depicts an abstracted creature. Amoeba-like organs show through the creature’s body.
Sarah Davidson, Illusionism, animated gif, 2021
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Digital file of tangled bead maze toy, as often found in the kids section of waiting rooms. Instead of beads, human and frog eyeball elements move along wires. Base is woodgrain and wires are red, green, blue and yellow and extend from the base like spider legs
Mel Thibodeau, Friend, mixed fabrics and polyester stuffing, 94” x 48” (with arms extended), 2021
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Photos of the artist, Mel Thibodeau, demonstrating their wearable sculpture made of multi textured, and variously coloured fake furs. While worn standing up, the sculpture extends from their head to their knees. The work is shown functioning as a seat and a wrapped pillow: Mel is pictured wearing the sculpture as a seat, while arms wrap and tie around their torso.
Sonja Ratkay, BIRDSTONETREE, pencil crayon drawing on paper, 9 x 12 in, 2021
Photography by Edwin Isford
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Pencil crayon drawing on white paper depicting an abstracted silhouette of a figure that appears to be part plant and part animal. The figure is coloured with a rainbow of colours blending together. Hand-drawn, stream-of-consciousness text wraps through their body and reads: “MERCURY DILUTED DEW DROP SLOW ORGANZA BURNT SIDEWALK LOZENGE LAVENDER IN BETWEEN CLUMP OF PETALS PAIN SUCCUMB”.
Juli Majer, Worm Brain Drawings, coloured pencil on vellum, 6.5” x 9.25”, 2021
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Set of two coloured pencil drawings displaying different worlds, creatures and objects. These elements are contained within squiggly frames which join them together like a non-linear comic.
Sonja Ratkay, Seaweed Angelus, Organza, wool roving, thread and metal dowels, 55 x 100 in, 2021
Photography by Edwin Isford
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A large purple, sheer, layered, and shimmery tapestry is shown installed hanging from the ceiling in a room. The tapestry depicts an abstracted body silhouette, and a vein-like shape inside of this form is stuffed with wool roving elements, which make it puffy. The tapestry, which is taller than a person, is meant to function as a room divider or space definer for the lounge.
Sarah Davidson, Web Lounge, acrylic paint and fabric dye on canvas, 8 inflatable fitness balls, nylon cord, dimensions variable (approximately 48 x 48 x 100 inches), 2021
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Eight fabric covered balls in varying sizes, painted and dyed to look like eyeballs from various creatures, held together by a large blue widely tied net. The sculpture is meant to be interacted with as seating and eyeballs are loosely contained so as to be reconfigured. Artist Sarah Davidson is shown sitting on sculpture like a lounge chair. Each of the six largest eyeballs are the size of an exercise ball and the two smaller ones are the size of a soccer ball.
Mel Thibodeau & Juli Majer, Untitled, mixed fabrics and polyester stuffing, 48” x 72”, 2021
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Photo series of a large, multi-textured quilt which is made of variously coloured fake furs and printed fabrics. The quilt features motifs of flowers, stars, worms and squiggly shapes.
Juli Majer collaboration with Scott Lougheed, LumpWorld, digital interactive game, 2021
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Digital drag and drop game featuring 3D-rendered creatures, plants, fruit, objects and furniture in a lounge-like digital space.
Welcome to the Puddle Popper Lounge!
PUDDLE POPPER slips through realities towards our desires, passing between description, invention and idealisation to wiggle around truths. Puddle Popper merges forms to create a set-like world featuring invented beings, humanoids, tentacles and unreadable text. Appendages transform. Colour is revised. Portals open up, limbs are put part way through, and then all the way through, and new bodies are observed and created.
Consisting of soft sculptures, 3D animations, drawings, and other eggs, The Puddle Popper Lounge is meant to function both as an art work and as an interactive installation for the 2021 Vancouver Comic Arts Festival. Originally conceived as an in-person project in 2020, the Lounge transformed into an online space after that edition of VANCAF was cancelled.
Puddle Popper is an artist collective formed in 2015 in Vancouver by artists Sarah Davidson, Juli Majer, Sonja Ratkay and Mel Thibodeau. Through interactive sculpture installations, we propose alternate spaces in which bodies both human and non-human interact: themes of embodiment, comfort, queerness, and ecology are the basis for playful, collaborative world-building.
Puddle Popper enlisted the help of artist/designer Brennan Kelly, web developer Johnnie Regalado, and 3D artist Scott Lougheed to realize our ideas in the digital realm.
SARAH DAVIDSON works primarily between drawing and painting to create compositions in which shadowy, biomorphic figures and delicate, foliated fragments mingle. While she often draws directly from ‘nature’, her drawings diffract distinctions between embodied self and other through a queer ecological lens: critters and space collapse in upon one another, suggesting a permeable web. Both the eye and the mind work towards the known--animals, plants, brush marks, lines--but are caught in a space of undoing. In swampy, saturated tones, her works wonder: who’s looking at who, and how?
JULI MAJER is an artist whose work explores heightened emotional and psychological states, imagined worlds, and peculiar modes of existence. Investigating fictional microcosms through drawing, sculpture, and comics, Majer weaves together visceral abstractions, somatic sensations, and inarticulate textures which emerge from relationships between her characters, symbols, objects, and environments.
SONJA RATKAY navigates unconscious and conscious drives through which she aims to process thoughts alongside viewers. Ratkay’s bodily art exists on the threshold of interior and exterior realms, and evokes liminal states of being, populated by known and unknown symbols. Her work spans many mediums from ink drawings, to multi-sensory elements--such as smell--that are known to trigger memories, and most recently textile works. Through repetition of motifs including abstracted bodies and text-as-image, she creates choreographed movements between body and mind, a pathway for feelings and thoughts to travel.
Through tactile sculptures meant to be both observed and interacted with, MEL THIBODEAU’s work squirms around the question ‘what is a body?’ Their vocabulary of soft forms is often bound by colourful ropes, grommets, and plush chains. Feelings of nostalgic comfort and the uncanny are fostered by a combination of toylike textures and half-recognizable body parts, eluding exact description and hovering somewhere between person and thing. These partial and abstracted forms unsettle gender, wink at desire, and ponder fleshy realities both familiar and alien.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Sonja Ratkay, Detail of the making of tapestry
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A closeup of layered organza fabric in a moiré pattern with flower-headed pins tacked to fabric in a scattered arrangement.
Juli Majer, Untitled, coloured pencil on vellum, 6.5” x 9.25”, 2021
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A coloured pencil drawing displaying alien mechanisms, bubbling forms and flower-like creatures emerging from a lotus root.
Mel Thibodeau & Juli Majer, behind the scenes photograph, 2021
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Image of a pink and olive coloured plush creature in bondage, held in front of a multi-textured, oversized seat cushion made of soft fleece and fake fur.
Sonja Ratkay, Detail of the making of tapestry
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A closeup of layered organza fabric in a moiré pattern with flower-headed pins tacked to fabric in a scattered arrangement.
Sarah Davidson, Leaf Tender, watercolour, ink, and pencil crayon on paper, 7.5 x 11.5 in, 2021
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A drawing made up of dense, cross hatched line work depicts oak leaves, grasses and eyeballs woven together to create a dense field of intersecting elements. Two mismatched eyeballs are centered, one frog eye and one abstracted human eye, appear to regard the viewer. The muted colour palette of red, blue, black and yellow creates a murky swamp of elements. Elements intersect to create movement and the appearance of floating.
Sarah Davidson, Thaw, watercolour, ink and pencil crayon on paper, 15.75 x 12 in, 2021
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A drawing made up of dense, cross hatched line work depicts lily pads and eyeballs woven together to create a dense field of intersecting elements. Two frog eyes appear to regard the viewer. The muted colour palette of green, brown and blue creates a murky swamp of elements. Elements intersect to create movement and the appearance of floating.
Mel Thibodeau, Friend, mixed fabrics and polyester stuffing, 94” x 48” (with arms extended), 2021
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Video of the artist, Mel Thibodeau, dancing while wearing their sculpture made of multi textured, and variously coloured fake furs. While worn standing up, the sculpture extends from their head to their knees.