Sarah Vigars

Maker ShowcaseExhibition

5 Jan

Written By Laura Wasley

Maker Showcase

Sarah Vigars, Hoopoe

Sarah Vigars is a puppet maker and puppeteer with a specialism in marionette making (string puppets).

Her work combines traditional woodcarving practices with contemporary innovations in design. To date, Sarah has built puppets to commission for small-scale theatre, street theatre, film, participatory projects and private collections. She also creates and tours marionette shows for family audiences with her performance company Flying with Strings. In 2023 marionette making was added to the Heritage Crafts Association’s Red List of Endangered Crafts. Sarah is therefore proud to be one of the UK’s few remaining marionette makers and operators.

11 June - 9 August 2025

Maker Showcase Gallery

Flying with String Marionette Theatre

Flying with Strings MT was founded in 2020 when Sarah was awarded a DYCP grant by Arts Council England. This funded the development of her marionette making and culminated in the creation of three bird marionettes that now feature in her first show of the same name (displayed here as part of her Maker Showcase). The puppets were awarded MAKE Southwest’s President’s Prize by sculptor Peter Randall Page RA in 2020.

A film of Flying with Strings (see below)was commissioned by MAKE Southwest for their 2021 puppetry exhibition Art, Craft and Imagination: a Peep into the World of Puppets. The live show of Flying with Strings has toured to a diverse range of settings including puppetry festivals in Beverley, Newcastle and Smethwick. In 2024 Flying with Strings partnered with Libraries Unlimited and began delivering their work to libraries in Devon, accompanied by a craft workshop for families.

Sarah is currently making a new show with Flying with Strings MT entitled The Treetop Circus, which will be ready to tour in Summer 2025 (photographs displayed in the exhibition). This new work has been commissioned by Libraries Unlimited, with additional partnership support from Villages in Action, Doorstep Arts and Exeter Northcott.

Inside the gallery

Flying with Strings

This film of Flying with Strings was commissioned by MAKE Southwest for their 2021 puppetry exhibition Art, Craft and Imagination: A Peep into the World of Puppets (curated by John Roberts). The puppets are made and puppeteered by Sarah Vigars and the music is arranged and performed by Louis Bingham.

About the exhibitor

Sarah Vigars | Devon

Sarah is a woodcarver and lover of wildlife. Her diverse creations include marionettes, jewellery, sculpture, and anything else she can fashion from wood.

Sarah’s work is meticulously hand-carved and hand-painted, using non-toxic, eco-friendly wood dyes and stains.

As a woodcarver, the careful workmanship she has developed owes a great deal to a studied handling of tools and a good deal of patience, not to mention a dedicated eye for her subjects.

By being in nature, walking the moorlands, fields and coastline of Devon (and beyond), Sarah takes inspiration from animals, plants, birds and beasts in their natural habitats.

Sarah originally trained in theatre design, which is where her love of puppetry first began. She learnt to carve while working for children’s puppet company Puppetcraft, mentored by puppet carver John Roberts.

sarahvigarsart.com

@sarahvigarsart