Ham & Laika

I’m back making paper art/cuts/crafts (I can never decide or be consistent with what I want to call them).

I find paper crafts very soothing to do and a great accompaniment to a podcast or a YouTube video, especially now the evenings are getting longer and there’s more time to make in the day-light. I can usually create what I have in my imagination quite quickly, usually in one session, which is a nice contrast to puppet and theatre-making which usually takes a lot longer to do.

I’ve had the idea of making paper crafted homages to famous dogs in history for years now and until now have not got round to it. I didn’t realise that it could be a gentle winding down exercise at the end of the day. I decided for my first dog, I wanted to make a little tribute to Laika, one of the first animals to be shot out into space to test the potential of space travel. I’ve been fascinated by Laika for years and made a pretty rubbish puppet of her a while back (Maybe I’ll make another one to redeem myself) I think she was a good dog.

But along with Laika I wanted to also make a paper craft Ham. Not a food ham, but Ham the chimpanzee who was sent, just like Laika, into space. I see them both as pioneers, one from the Soviet Union, one from the United States, one that didn’t come back and one who lived the end of their days on Earth.

They also represent my passion for dogs and a dear friend’s fascination with chimps and our joint interest in nature and animals.