1878 & Brown Foundation Galleries

January 19 - April 21, 2019

Opening Reception Saturday, January 19, 2019
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Artist talk at 6:30 PM

This exhibition is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Miss Pussycat
The Puppet Worlds of Miss Pussycat

The Puppet Worlds of Miss Pussycat features an installation of puppets and their worlds by New-Orleans based artist, musician, and puppeteer, Panacea Theriac (also known as Miss Pussycat). The exhibition includes puppets and puppet theaters, along with videos, photographs and ceramic sculptures of her puppets. The Puppet Worlds of Miss Pussycat highlights characters and worlds from her last five puppet shows: The Western Village Shopping Village, Clothes Made by Small Furry Animals, Frenchy and Jett, The Happy Castle of Goblinburg, and The Cookie Carnival Baking Contest. In her work, Miss Pussycat creates paracosmic fantasies that often relate to her own experience as an artist and musician. She’s in a band and her puppets have a band that releases records, while others are artists and museum workers in a fictitious museum. Each character assumes a life of their own in an ever-evolving series of stories.

Panacea Theriac's most widely known public role is as Miss Pussycat, performing puppet shows, singing, and playing maracas in the band “Quintron and Miss Pussycat”. Based in New Orleans, Quintron and Miss Pussycat present live organ-driven party music and puppet shows at parties all over the world.

Born in Antlers, Oklahoma, Theriac began her career in art and puppetry as a child in the Southern Baptist Church of Antlers as part of the Christian Puppet Youth Ministry. She later moved to New Orleans and started a secret nightclub called Pussycat Caverns, which hosted bands and all types of performance in a unique and lively atmosphere. Since 1997 she has run a similar secret night club, The Spellcaster Lodge, with the artist Quintron. Both of these enterprises have brought bands and other inspired people together to put on fun shows for the New Orleans 9th Ward neighborhood. For over 20 years, she has presented live puppet shows in rock clubs, libraries, and secret clubhouses all around the world. Theriac has also made a number of puppet movies and videos, including Trixie and the Treetunks, North Pole Nutrias, and Electric Swamp.

Exhibitions and installations are an important part of Theriac’s work. These shows display puppets and their worlds in galleries and museums and have included exhibits at The New Orleans Museum of Art and an installation at the Center for Contemporary Art in New Orleans. In 2017, she was a featured artist for Prospect 4, New Orleans’ citywide contemporary art triennial, with an exhibition at The Ogden Museum of Southern Art. In 2014, she and Quintron were each awarded a Rauschenberg Residency.

www.panaceatheriac.com