COLORADO SPRINGS — Standing upright, Sofia Hernandez Crade’s puppet would reach 24 feet tall.
But it has a journey to make. And to get to downtown Manitou Springs in one piece for this weekend’s Carnivale parade, it must steer clear of power lines and street signs as it travels on the back of a trailer for seven miles from the Colorado Springs artist’s home.
So in a seated position, the larger-than-life homage to Manitou Springs artist Charles H. Rockey will greet paradegoers at a less-imposing height of 17 feet. Still, the tribute to the man, credited for his whimsical arts portraying the mountain town, is likely one of the tallest entries in the parade’s 31-year history.
Layers of peach-colored paint over the deep folds around the puppet’s face make the papier-mache sculpture come to life. Wispy eyebrows made of horsehair poke out above its gentle blue eyes. Its long raggedy beard, made of eight gray wigs, dangles below.
The head alone weighs about 120 pounds and is the size of a washing machine. Each gnarled hand is larger than a human torso.
Going big was the whole point.
Sofia Hernandez Crade used horse hair for her puppet’s eyebrows and eyelashes. She worked with Dan Crossey to carry the head of the 24-foot-tall puppet outside. (Mark Reis, Special to The Colorado Sun)
“This has really made me feel that kind of big, bold, empowered side of myself that I feel like I’ve lost a little bit in the last few years of hardship,” multimedia artist and sculptor Hernandez Crade said from her home this week, three days before the debut of her homage to her artistic inspiration.
“This opportunity of just doing something that I’m passionate about feels really good, even if I am sleep deprived.”
Since Hernandez Crade began sculpting Jan. 20, boxes of plaster, tubes of paint and unfinished puppet pieces have taken over her home. A massive shoe covers her dining room table, next to an artist’s palette and two large hands made of papier-mache, plaster and wood.
In the past month, she’s spent hundreds of hours imagining, painting and hot gluing pieces of the puppet together inside her home. Unlike her smaller paintings on canvas, her puppet has required meticulous measurements and ingenious engineering.
It took a team of four friends and family members to carry the massive head out her back door (with only millimeters to spare) before it was lowered down onto the wooden frame via forklift. The puppet’s head, which was sculpted around an industrial barrel, sits on a lazy Susan so it can swivel side to side as it strolls down the parade route.
Dan Crossey and Sofia Hernandez Crade carry the head of the puppet outside. Alberto Hernandez Lemus steadies the head on a forklift. Hernandez Crade hugs Crossey after he helped place the head onto a frame he helped build. (Mark Reis, Special to The Colorado Sun)
It’s her first big project since the death of her 19-year-old brother, Demitri Crockett, who was fatally shot in October 2022 in Colorado Springs. After her monthslong hiatus, the puppet has inspired her to pick up her paintbrush and start creating again.
The puppet is also like a “love letter” to an artist who helped shape her own work, said Hernandez Crade, 34.
When artists start talking about forklifts, brace yourself. This is going to be something else.
— Laura Ettinger-Harwell, a co-chair of the city’s “ManiKrewe” committee
Rockey was 87 years old when he died in 2019. She remembers peering through Rockey’s studio windows when she was a child, admiring his impressionistic paintings of the small, quirky mountain town.
“For me, I feel like you can’t really think of one without the other,” Hernandez Crade said. “He just really captured the spirit and I think helped to foster that spirit and that energy that I think you don’t really find in most places.”
“I think he’s probably an artist that could have made a name anywhere, but he chose Manitou.”
The puppet will be pushed by a forklift Saturday, alongside a crew of people dressed as fairies, elves and woodland creatures that were often depicted in Rockey’s art and holding his framed pieces.
“Imagine if you were just surrounded by your works, but they were animated, almost like a dream or a vision come to life,” Hernandez Crade said. Her 90-year-old grandma will be part of the crew, along with her Cavalier King Charles spaniel named Malala, dressed as a snail.
Three decades of puppets
Puppets have been an integral part of Manitou’s Mardi Gras parade since it started, said Laura Ettinger-Harwell, a co-chair of the city’s “ManiKrewe” committee overseeing the weekend’s events.
The city’s growing collection of papier-mache puppets — some as old as three decades — are meant to be worn and involve the community, she said this week during a “puppet TLC session” to patch up puppet noses and do other repairs.
This year’s theme of “ARTopia” is meant to honor the city that’s known for being a colony for artists, and Hernandez Crade’s puppet fits perfectly, she said.
“When artists start talking about forklifts, brace yourself. This is going to be something else,” Ettinger-Harwell said. “We’re excited to see it.”
Sofia Hernandez Crade brushes out wig hair used for the beard. (Mark Reis, Special to The Colorado Sun)
In the meantime, Hernandez Crade’s Rockey puppet will receive many finishing touches.
On Wednesday morning, she glued a chunk of gray hair behind the puppet’s ear to fill in a bald spot and rubbed white paint through the strands of its unkempt beard to add dimension.
After the parade, the puppet will be looking for a new home in a place where he can continue to be admired.
“If not, I’m probably just gonna have to rent a storage unit eventually, but it’d be cool if there could be an art space in Colorado Springs and then it comes out on tour ever so often,” Hernandez Crade said.
“Art is to be seen.”
Before the parade starts at 1 p.m. Saturday in downtown Manitou Springs, there will be a “Mumbo Jumbo Gumbo cookoff” to sample gumbo from amateur and professional chefs. Each tasting costs 75 cents. The parade and cookoff were initially scheduled for February but postponed due to weather.