Blue Bear Puppet Lab founder Brian Kooser
story by Mark Sterling
It’s another day working as a telephone solicitor, and Brian Kooser is sitting in his workspace making sculptures out of the 3x5 cards and address labels given to him to do his job. A coworker approaches. “There’s this lady you have to meet,” they suggest.
The lady turns out to be the person running Thistle Theater, a puppet theater in Seattle. After a strong recommendation from her mentor, who turned out to be an old college professor of Kooser’s, he was hired on as a full-time performer at Thistle.
Today, Kooser is a full-time lecturer of Art at Central Washington University, where he got his MFA. He is also the owner of “Blue Bear Puppet Lab” in downtown Ellensburg. The puppet lab is part of “The Ink” artists’ collective, which also includes Ellensburg Community Radio and Manastash Media. [The Ink had its official opening on Friday, Feb. 7 - see photo gallery.]
Kooser’s advice for young artists trying to make it is, “look at everything. What do you like to do? Figure out how that works. Get in with other people. Learn collaboration skills.”
As a life-long artist, the 61-year-old has tried his hand at a variety of mediums. Starting from when he was a child, Kooser sold superheroes made from construction paper to his fellow classmates for a little pocket change.
He then followed his love of music and became the front man for two punk rock bands in the 80s, The Dead Lennons and Model Citizen. The band split after a few years, and he stopped pursuing music.
Eventually Kooser found his niche with Thistle Theater and performance art with puppets. He stayed with this company for 12 years before, he says, “I discovered that I didn’t like working in children’s theater.” That wasn’t because of the kids, but rather the overprotective parents.
This directly influenced him to start working on his own projects: Giant puppets ranging from three “sexy pigs” to a 12-foot-long crocodile. These giant puppets are what Kooser specializes in today after finding an interest in anatomy, helping him create more realistic puppets. The giant puppets granted him success in his field and even earned him an artist’s residence at the University of Seattle.
After some time, Brian found himself back in Ellensburg to finish his undergraduate degree, since the credits he had gotten in the 80s wouldn’t transfer anywhere else.
Kooser completed his degrees by 2019 and realized there was a giant puppet-shaped hole in the town of Ellensburg waiting to be filled by him. His puppets had landed him good publicity and correlated to him getting the studio space downtown.
The Blue Bear Puppet Lab’s creations are available for public viewing at their space on Main Street. Kooser also sells his skills by offering a course for anyone interested in wanting to learn how to make their own puppets.
