Will Krause

I needed to make a last-minute Halloween costume, so I glued together this mask from an old cardboard box, feathers leftover from a stork puppet I made a while back, and some felt, pipe cleaners, and – of course – a handful of plastic googly eyes.

I designed this exhibit as a pop-up marketplace to be located on the site of the demolished Thunderbolt rollercoaster on Coney Island. It takes the shape of a giant squid attacking the mainland!

The florist’s storefront on Sesame Street needed some dressin’ up, so I made this sticker for their window, along with some stickers for non-existent credit cards.

I built this puppet stage for Opening Ceremony’s event at Fashion’s Night Out. It was built over a long weekend out of plywood, MDF, yards of black and red velvet, and lots of Christmas lights! Andrew Bunch helped me with painting and assembly, and sewing magnets to the curtains so that they would close nicely, and Jessie Voris upholstered the chaise lounge – with buttons and everything!

This one was a challenge! I made this creature out of all sorts of materials: lobster claws, doll parts, shells from the beach, latex gloves, ping-pong balls, dust masks, shark jaws, lots of latex, and a toy octopus… a real potpourri of stuff.

Katie Akana thought of the pneumatic mechanism to suddenly open the creatures’ eyes, and Courtland Premo wired up a remote control device which used CO2 cartridge tire inflators and servos to operate the pneumatics.

I made this piece for a Family Circus-themed art show at the Guilty Pleasures Gallery (aka: curator Liz Zanis’s apartment.)

Billy runs when the large orange ring background rotates – the ground beneath his feet has offset bumps so that each foot is alternately set in motion. The faster the ring spins, the faster little Billy’s foam legs run.

It was made out of leftover materials destined for the trash: dented foamcore, faded construction paper, scraps of insulation foam, and almost-empty tubes of paint.

The Paul Taylor Dance Company contacted me to perform repairs on a prop stuffed turkey that was 44 years old! It was first used in a performance of “Orbs” in 1966. 44 is very old for an item made out of latex rubber, and I started my restoration by carefully trimming away all of the rubber that had hardened and become brittle. Quite a bit needed to be removed, since the turkey was left hanging in a window and the areas which were exposed to sunlight were especially deteriorated. One of the legs had broken away entirely, and the head had shattered and was missing a large chunk.

I rebuilt the head with polyurethane foam, and added new stuffing to bring the turkey back into turkey-shape. The body had become flattened and wrinkled over time, so I needed to cut away the worst of the wrinkles, and patch over these areas with bandages made out of gauze and liquid latex. I stitched together the holes in the old latex, and bandaged over the repairs to blend them in with the turkey’s skin.

Finally, I painted the turkey with a coat of tinted latex and the old bird was ready to take to the stage.

I made this stork puppet for the recent season of Whitest Kids U’Know. It needed to be used as both a sock puppet when the head peeked through a window, and as a full-size flying puppet. The head is removable to serve as a sock puppet, and it fits back onto the body when the full bird needs to be used.

The framework of the stork is foam, wire, and corrugated cardboard, and the covering is a rough, stretchy wool-like material and lots of real feathers.

This electric chicken mixer was made to scratch Silent Library contestants with its sharp talons!

I removed the guts from an ordinary hand mixer and modified them so that they would fit inside a rubber chicken; I’m very happy with how it came together, especially how the power cord comes out the chicken’s mouth.

For this video, I designed, constructed and puppeted the Godzilla-style creature. (there are some shots of the process of building the puppet over here) I also made a few of the props for the city and helped to dress the set.

I worked with Ryan McFaul (director, camera, props, set) and Katie Akana (props, set, moving vehicles and things around with magnets) It was so much fun to smash things with them, even though I spent the better part of two days crammed under a table with one arm reached as high as I could manage, surrounded by the output of a sweet-smelling fog machine.

We even managed to make Godzilla breathe fire! (kids at home: the secret is an aerosol can of WD-40 and a lighter.)