Socktober Week 1: Each Sock a Citizen and a Story

Here I sit, glue gun in hand, various sock bodies beckoning like weird fuzzy worms of pure potentiality.

I’m ready to tell some stories. 

Every sock I pick up, heck, every sock I see is laden with potential. Whether it will become a long-lost dog from an imaginary island, an ornery grocer from the 1940’s, or a time-addled Clock Dragon from the Seven Layers of Space, I’m only a few errant scissor snips and several glue gun burns away from meeting someone, another fine citizen of Sock Puppet City.

It took me many years to accept that all along I’ve been telling stories. With every puppet I’ve made, every song I’ve written, every article I’ve penned, it’s all been characters and stories. And I know it sounds trite, but it feels like the stories were there all along, like I’m an archaeologist as opposed to an artist or a writer. I uncover them as opposed to simply making them up.

Twelve years of puppet portrait sales and nearly forty years of life and I’m ready to tell the world. I’m an artist, I’m a writer, I’m a maker, I’m a teacher. 

I’m a storyteller.

It’s Socktober, and I’m making a puppet every day of it. It’s time to tell thirty-one new stories, to meet thirty-one new citizens. I can’t wait to find them.

Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martystuff/

lovemarty