I was commissioned to create a ‘backdrop’ (but in reality this is more of a ‘frontdrop’) for a puppet theatre performance based on the story of British-Canadian fur trader, surveyor, and map-maker, David Thompson. Known to some native peoples as ‘Koo-Koo-Sint’ or ‘the Stargazer’, he mapped over 3.9 million square kilometres of North America in his lifetime, and for this has been described as the ‘greatest land geographer who ever lived.’ Keeping to a palette of pale turquoise and page-worn yellows and beige is reflects historical maps and images. The title lettering harkons back to history and a time when we still created and recorded by the hand.
