O U T S K IR T S
Talking
Heads
S T O R Y BY
Shannon Sharpe
P H O T O G R A P H Y BY
Elena Dorfman
When Keith Lovik was 19 years old, he
took over his father’s Seattle-based puppet-
making business. It wasn’t something the
untrained maker planned. His father aban-
doned the family, also leaving behind his
angry and frustrated business partner. The
partner soon left as well. Lovik was quickly
informed he needed to fulfill the outstand-
ing orders. Realizing it was sink or swim,
Lovik, who is now 35, began teaching him-
self the craft, the first step being to take
apart and then refurbish the puppets to un-
derstand how they are built—literally learn-
ing the trade from the outside in. “Nothing
that I’d done in my life was artistic,” Lovik
says. “But I appreciate that I was never
taught anything. I think I’ve improved
greatly on the puppets both artistically and
mechanically by deconstructing them.”
Lovik’s father, a teacher who originally
began making puppets as a way to commu-
nicate with his students, had made a wide
range of figures, from elaborate sock ver-
sions to puppets in a can to ventriloquist
dummies. These dummies are now Lovik’s
focus, and his business—Lovik’s Puppets—
has since become a supplier to amateur and
many professional ventriloquists, such
as Terry Fator, a Las Vegas headliner and
a winner on
America’s Got Talent.
With their heads made of basswood or
a rigid form of latex, Lovik’s dummies offer
an assortment of features ventriloquists
might desire—wiggling ears, winking and
blinking eyes, even a spitting mouth. The
dummies, winch are custom-made, are con-
structed to be either 35-inch starter figures
or full-size professional figures. Clients
choose all physical aspects of their dummy,
such as eye, hair and skin color. Lovik be-
gins the process by forming a head out of
plasticine, an oil-based clay, pouring plaster
around the head to create a mold and then
pouring latex into the mold. This is what
would be used for a latex head. Fora wood
head, the next step is “tracing” and carving
from a master head to a block of basswood
with a wood-carving machine called a du-
plicator. Lovik then attaches the head to a
wooden post with movement levers and>
O f necessity, the self-taught craftsman Keith Lovik
made himself into a master o f a time-honored area
o f puppetry—the ventriloquist dummy.
Opposite: Lovik holds
the head of Maynard,
one of ventriloquist
Terry Fator’s exclusive
characters. Besides cus-
tom characters, Lovik
has also converted toy
character puppets, such
as Charlie McCarthy
(left) or Howdy Doody
(back), into professional
ventriloquist dummies.
Right: Some of Lovik’s
original characters in-
clude (clockwise from
back center) Clyde,
Betsy, Ugh and Boxcar
Bob. Fator has special-
ly commissioned the
dark-haired, blue-eyed
Maynard and the bald
Walter T. Airdale
(front center).
A
9
<!*
)
june/july 10 american craft 029
www.WorldMags.net & www.Journal-Plaza.net
