Live Active Cultures

If you couldn’t make it, you still have opportunities to meet two of my favorite creature creators who were there. Melissa Menzer, who sculpts personality-packed memory jars, is teaching a workshop on how to make them at Sanford’s Jeanine Taylor Folk Art (9:30 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 10; $85). And noted visionary collage artist Missionary Mary Proctor, whose action-figure assemblage is the highlight of my art collection, has an exhibition at Crealdé School of Art’s Hannibal Square Heritage Center gallery opening Jan. 20.

For a finale, I finished with more Orlando Puppet Festival fun. Saturday night’s Action Puppet Force Puppet Slam at Urban ReThink brought out a cavalcade of first-class characters, both onstage and among the standing-room audience who patiently waited more than an hour for the curtain. Slams of any sort are always uneven, but there were at least three standout segments. In “Morning Toast,” Marta Mozelle MacRostie displayed masterful manipulation skills in illustrating an epic tragedy of burnt bread. New York puppeteer Honey Goodenough brought an empty baby blanket to heartbreaking life in “Sweet Dreams.” And oversized interdimensional eggplant “Godrick” (aka local artist Jack Fields) was a deliriously depressing emcee, deftly covering between-act dead spots with deadpan non sequiturs.

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