Carol Preston - art, craft and stories

Carol started making puppets out of cereal boxes when she was ten years old, having been inspired after attending a puppet show at the then Johannesburg Civic Theatre. Her passion for the arts, in all its forms, has driven her career ever since. After her studies in fine art and theatre design she moved into the technical side of theatre where she enjoyed many years in lighting, starting at the Natal Playhouse, then the Johannesburg Civic Theatre, and as production manager at the Wits Theatre. As a free-lance theatre practitioner in between this full-time employment she worked as lighting designer/technician, production manager and stage manager in various theatres in Southern Arica and Europe. Her post graduate studies in anthropology and dramatic arts brought her to a deeper awareness of the connection between the human and the natural worlds, which facilitated a new direction in her work.

In 2014 she moved to Wakkerstroom, a small village in southern Mpumalanga, where she is able to continue with her own work as an artist and writer, and where she is able to contribute in small ways to make the changes in the social ills that are necessary in healing the planet.

Carol works in a variety of creative media: woodcut printing, pen and ink drawing, charcoal, pastel and mixed media, and crafting which includes upcycling from found objects and waste material. She draws her subject matter from her immediate environment. Her work also includes illustration for children’s books, and she has contributed to two publications for the Spring Alive programme which aims to raise awareness on migratory birds. From her beginnings of cereal box puppets, she has moved into a spectrum of genres in her puppetry. A converted trunk serves as a proscenium arch puppet theatre that can pack up and travel on the roof of her car, and the puppets that feature here are glove puppets made of papier mache and toilet roll insides. Rod puppets, constructed out of ceramics and fabric, are her company of Stuppets – or story-telling puppets, who travel in a suitcase and provide the platform for Carol’s voice as an environmental activist. She also improvises puppet-making, using found objects, and telling her stories for groups of children in structured or non-structured settings.

Carol is also a prolific cartoonist, and here her subject matter is often hard-hitting and certainly for an adult audience. Her biggest body of work in cartoon is her Teach me how to scream; or a week in the life of Doris Dyke, which looks at the underlying patriarchal language that society embraces on an everyday basis. She is currently working on a collection of small panels on various subject matter, and hopes one day to be able to write/draw a graphic novel.

Carol has self-published two manuals and a children’s book of poetry. The manuals speak directly to two other passions - earthworm and silkworm farming. One book of creative non-fiction is pending, as is an adventure story aimed at teenagers.

In 2021, she completed her PhD on arts-based environmental education, using the arts to change environmental behaviour in rural children. She is convinced that arts-based learning is the only way that children of today will be able to grow into adults who will live fully-rounded, thoughtful and altruistic lives, and who will then become responsible custodians of our planet. As an extension of the PhD and work through various voluntary organizations, an eco-club has been formed with the children, called the Litter Lions, and this has been registered as an NGO. A venue has recently been accessed and from here Carol and her team of like-minded people will be running art, dance and drama classes from 2020.