Meet Maddie Forrest of Maddie Mutations in West Hollywood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Maddie Forrest.

Maddie, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
“How did I get here?” I ask myself aloud on this bright, breezy day, staring slack-jawed up at the sun as it stares back at me with no eyes, mouth, ears or face.

I ask myself this often, as of late. Usually, though, it’s in the form of a silent scream within my mind, the only answer being a soft wiggly whisper from somewhere in the pink-wrinkle-bits of my brain, saying “I’m not sure, but your luck hasn’t run out yet.”

Who am I?? I am an L.A. artist who makes miniature props and set fabrication, mainly for Stop Motion Animation. I’m also an Independent Artist, taking on commissions as well as selling my own whimsical creations online and at places you buy art. Recently, I’ve been getting into puppetry and sometimes, to get those phat stacks of cash, I also hand model (and/or puppeteer) Barbie dolls for Mattel videos. Let me spin you my tale!

It all kind of started for me in high school with one of those eccentric art teachers you hear about. She showed me the wide possibilities and depth of emotion possible in designing a visual space, and thanks to her, I could see myself flourishing in a career making the world stranger and more interesting with my art. In college, I decided to major in sculpture, aiming to combine 2D illustrations and 3D creatures into gallery pieces. Soon, my voice started to form by drawing obsessively whatever my funny bone shivered at the most! A gross and globby style developed that I felt I knew how to “talk” through. I fell in love with imagining these absurd monsters and sculpting them to be realized in resin and metal. As soon as I entered the “real” world from college (which basically meant moving back home!), I decided Designer Toys were where I would make my mark. Days on end for months at a time sculpting and designing and obsessing over if I would ever make it or not ended up being depressing. After a year or more holed up in my room with a parade of beautiful unsold toys amassed around me, I had to come to terms with how hard this road would be. I decided I had to have some kind of refocused jumpstart; find a new job somewhere in between the “dream” I’d concocted of going at it on my own and the possible nightmare of some kind of art desk job. That’s where Stop Motion changed the “frame rate” of my picture.

Think about it! Weirdo surreal storylines in which I could sculpt strange miniature stuff, PLUS a secure job with human interaction?? YAS SIR, I said, sign me up!! If only it were that easy (and there was an actual security)! I started my quest in researching how the stop-motion world in Los Angeles worked by stalking professionals online. Do your research, kids! Find the studio, find who does the job you want there through LinkedIn and then find their Tumblr where they post detailed photos of their work (as well as their dog, Splotchy!!!).

A hopeful email sent to Open the Portal (OTP) is what set me afloat. I found them through a list of Los Angeles stop-motion studios and thought their style was perfect — a combo of every weird ’90s cartoon I’d ever seen with a DIY cult’s aesthetic. I inquired about an internship, and they offered me a tour. Heart a-tingle, nerves a-flare, I took a bus to Chinatown. They were warm and weird and I got a taste of what a real studio was like. Some kind of magic must have happened that day because a few weeks later they offered me an internship! Over the next year, I learned a lot about fabrication and what the business of art freelancing is like and I got to feel out how this career plays out for people. In addition, I learned a lot about the perspective of OTP, a young studio; only 8 months old when I met them. They’re an alternative studio, pushing the surreal, decorating their workspace with every oddity you can imagine, like a museum of their interests. I worked as an intern for a while and then they started hiring me for jobs for surprisingly big-name clients: Disney, Neil Young, and Netflix! By some twist of fate, through people I met at OTP, I also fell into a job as a hand model at Mattel, puppeteering on the series “Barbie, Live in the Dreamhouse” – a side quest I never anticipated but was excited about embracing!

After about a year of hand modeling, fabrication found me again when OTP referred me to Watts, an LA-based directing duo that needed some miniature fabrication help. We worked together on a few Postmates Instagram advertisements and a (secret) commercial coming out later this year! It was the first time I had worked as a fabricator out from under OTP’s wings and I got the opportunity to put everything I had learned to use! On these jobs, I got to see small beautiful worlds grow in front of me and meet professional fabricators who had been working much longer and at so many more studios than I have. It’s been eye-opening and exhilarating and I’m sure only the beginning of so much more to come!

Currently, I’m engrossed in a dreamy collaborative project. For years, I’ve followed my favorite local music project, Smiling Beth, and have thus become enamored with Los Angeles’s DIY music and comedy scenes. At one of these shows, I became exposed to Ember Knight’s body of work (that’s also a joke because she got naked onstage). She performed a strangely jarring comedy act that blew me away and that my friends and I found ourselves recounting to everyone we knew. Soon, I realized she is just an overall creative powerhouse, writing and starring insincere and surreal films with her filmmaking partner, Bobby McCoy, releasing a playfully haunting album complete with music videos and a stage show with dancers, water gargling, group chanting, etc. She asked me to make a puppet for that performance project, a murderous cat puppet (that I also puppeteer). Next, she’s directing a production of the musical Cats, which I am an ensemble member in! There’s no easy way to define Ember and recently, because of her, I find myself refreshingly compelled to resist definitions as well. Our next collaboration has me especially inspired. Ember and Bobby are making a new film about a famous puppeteer and I’ll be storyboarding, designing and making props and sets for a few magical segments in it. They have written such a deeply beautiful story, it’s pushing me to try and dream up the most imaginative way to express the parts I’m working on. Hooray!

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
A big obstacle has been doubted – a looming awareness that not everyone can make a living in the arts and that one of those people might end up being me in the end. I think knowing this, I’m pushed harder into the hustle, continuously exposing myself to people smarter and more talented than me. Another huge obstacle is that I am often petrified in front of these people. It’s hard to figure out how to convey to that “perfect” person that: 1. You are dope, cool and chill, 2. You need help and they have the precious help you need and 3. You are worthwhile for them to spend any amount of time on. My advice to those starting out would be to explore the mediums you’re interested in, do your own research and be proactive; do your homework. Then, when you’re face to face with someone you respect, you can ask intriguing questions about that odd blinking mechanism you tried on your first-hand puppet (I asked that the other day to a puppeteer I respected and it turned out pretty well).

An obstacle I didn’t anticipate while in school is loneliness. It’s hard to picture before you jump into it but the actual day-to-day life of a solo artist is quite isolating. It’s been portrayed as romantic or picturesque; an artist alone with their wild ideas, scribbling in dark corners, an outsider of society, wow! Finding a balance and exploring what you need is essential. I found myself feeling a little crazy and set aside from the world after about a year just drawing and sculpting and obsessively posting on Instagram, hoping to someday have random strangers buy and collect my offspring. I needed to incorporate more human contact into my career, which ended up being wow big fun. Finding others to collaborate with and finding jobs that give me a community has been a thing I only recently figured out would make me feel full, like at a buffet, but like right before you eat too much. “Collaborating” had initially sounded hard and complicated. Who wants to sacrifice some of their fancy voice and trust strangers??? I think it was a blindsight because I hadn’t stuck my leg out and found enough like-minded people yet. In doing that, I’ve come to realize that I’m not as much of a loner as I had imagined myself to be.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Maddie Mutations – what should we know?
I do a wide variety of things!  I’m a “Stop Motion Animation Fabricator.” “What’s that?” you may ask, bewildered at this bodacious phrase! (Well, stop your motion, cuz I’m gonna go right ahead and answer it.) Stop Motion is an animation technique in which objects are manipulated and photographed to make it look like they’re moving independently. I make props and sets for these types of productions, mostly commercials and short films but someday I hope also TV shows and movies! My personal art walks side by side with what I do in stop motion. I’m enchanted with creating loopy doopy lumpy monsters. They started as small ink drawings – odd emotive beings interacting with each other, wearing ill-fitting clothing, and drooling their bodies through surreal transformations and abstractions. At this point, these emotional lumps have crawled their way through my silly hands into our world as designer toys, jewelry, elaborate illustrations, and comics, and they are still hungry for more! Currently, I’ve embarked on a rejuvenating evolution, collaborating with Ember Knight (who I mentioned before). I’m fabricating and storyboarding for a dream-like journey within her next movie (which I’m enthralled by and excited about)! I can’t say too much because SHHH it’s a secret, but keep your eye out; it’s going to be wow with a capital “THIS IS GOOD” and a lowercase “didn’t mind how great that was.” Anyway, thanks.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Who else deserves credit – have you had mentors, supporters, cheerleaders, advocates, clients or teammates that have played a big role in your success or the success of the business? If so – who are they and what role did they plan/how did they help.

My parents deserve a LOT of credit, of course. Birthed from artsy, thoughtful, loving parents, I was nurtured with crazy weird art, films, and shows all around Los Angeles and in our museum-esque home. There’s no way I would be the way I am without their example.

My high school art teacher Mrs. Douglass is a crazy lady who was impossibly inspired to push her students along and show us how beautiful a made-up world on a page could be. Without her believing in me, I would have never seen what I could do and imagine.

Open the Portal opened the stop-motion doors for me, guiding me into this career. Quique, George, and Pia, in particular, became mentors for me, investing time into my development, taking me under their wing and guiding me.

My childhood friend, Hazen, deserves a shoutout. I had a very toy-centric internal life when I was young. For a long period in my youth Hazen and I would engross ourselves in this long narrative story-game with a backpack full of animal, human and alien friends we assembled for playtime. We became consumed for hours with crafting this miniature world and it’s no wonder that’s what I do now! I’m certain in those early toy hangouts, my mind was cementing what it deemed most precious.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.maddieforrest.com
• Email: maddieforrestart@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maddiemutations
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maddieforrestart/
• Other: http://maddieforrest.tumblr.com/

Image Credit:
Patrick Ryland, Maddie Forrest

Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.