Retta Folsom has created characters her whole life. As a young girl, she and her siblings made their own fun – literally – by making up characters and settings out of their natural surroundings and imagining stories in the worlds of their creations.
That passion stuck with her. Folsom, now 88, has made a lifetime of telling stories to children in McCracken County with puppets she designed – many of which are now on display as part of an exhibition this month at the Yeiser Art Center in Paducah.
While her family didn’t purchase pre-made toys growing up, Folsom said her main ways to have fun were through reading and playing pretend.
“That's what people did in those days. We had no television, I don't think had been invented yet,” Folsom said. “We lived near woodlands and a gravel pit, so there were all the raw materials, so we made worlds of our own.”
Folsom never outgrew that imaginative drive, and it proved to be the foundation for much of her career. After she had kids of her own, Folsom – then a piano teacher – heard about a job opening in the 1970s at the then-Paducah Public Library helping a librarian with a program reading books to children.
“They had like four little hand puppets, and each one had a certain job to do at the library. I thought that was so neat that the puppets became part of each story time,” Folsom said. “That's what I continued as others left and others came on. I was sort of in charge of making the puppets, doing that and doing shows.”
Some puppet pals like Bob Dog, Lady Dragon and Dr. Duck became mainstays at Folsom’s story time shows, entertaining generations of McCracken County children. Since the early 1970s, Folsom has held storytelling shows off and on at the Paducah Public Library – now the McCracken County Public Library. Along with her husband and some of her children, she also started the Folsom Puppet Company, which held storytelling performances at places like Market House Theatre.
“Behind the Curtain: Puppetry through the lens of Retta Folsom” features those puppets and more from Folsom’s collection, along with historical and cultural puppets and dolls from different countries and works from regional artists.
Oftentimes, the inspiration for Folsom’s puppets came from the books she read to groups of kids. Folsom said she wanted to create characters that would help tell some of these stories.
“I'm always wondering what its personality is while I'm in the process of making it, and a lot of times we make something for [a specific role] that is already assigned.”
Through her puppet shows, which often involve leading sing-a-longs with the families in attendance, Folsom said she wanted to teach children to love reading and learning new things.
“I would have had a boring life had it not been for the work of working with children and working with books, which I adore,” Folsom said.
YAC Executive Director Brooke Yandle said Folsom is a “star example” of a folk artist who imbues her work with her ideals and passions – and uses her creations to make the community a stronger place.
“Craft is a necessary human skill, and so we want to recognize when people appreciate craft, or they have dedicated themselves to it. I feel that puppetry fits just as easily [in an art gallery] as a sculpture or a painting does,” Yandle said.
Folsom is also an author. As part of an initiative by the McCracken County library and Paducah Symphony Orchestra to teach kids about famous classical musicians, she wrote books about Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Those books were then given away to kids at the schools and other places where they held storytelling shows about these composers.
While “Behind the Curtain” has been on display at YAC, Folsom and McCracken County Public Library Story Time Director Nicole Brown have been holding weekly shows at the art center where they perform with puppets, sing songs and read some of Folsom’s books. Kids that attend these shows get to take home a book as well as a finger puppet.
Nearly 50 years after Lady Dragon and Dr. Duck first took the stage, Brown said those characters and some of Folsom’s other puppets are still used to tell stories to local children. Brown said Folsom’s work over the years has made the McCracken library’s story time sessions anything but typical, and that the characters and flair she brought to these shows over the decades deserve to live on.
“Miss Retta is our heritage,” Brown said. “[It] makes me proud that the library is embracing this, I would say unique, heritage.”
For Folsom, story telling and puppetry let her engage with children and help them explore the world around them. It also showed how impactful sharing stories can be in shaping young lives.
“You can make all of these connections with something like a puppet, you can make them with music, you can make them with storytelling, and you can make them with friends,” Folsom said. “If I pass today, my life has been truly wonderful, and I approach each day with gratitude.”
Folsom is putting on two more storytelling shows this month at the Yeiser while her exhibition is on display. The shows will take place on July 9 and 16 at 1:30 p.m.
“Behind the Curtain” is on display at the Yeiser through July 25.
