Jacob Graham is a queer Brooklyn based multidisciplinary artist with a focus on puppetry, lighting, and music. His use of antiquated tools and obsolete technologies are the result of a strong proclivity towards tangibility, which is a key component to his signature mid-century gothic style.

In 2015 Graham launched The Creatures of Yes, a puppet web series that was part of the VICE Creators Project (R.I.P.) and has since been shown at festivals, galleries, and universities around the United States, including at Series Fest, RSC Shorts Fest, REEL Puppetry Film Festival, IU Cinema, and at the Kishka Gallery & Library in Vermont and at the Hudson Eye Arts Festival. Creatures of Yes is also an experiment in time travel, predominately using equipment from the 1970’s or earlier, and in particular cathode-ray tube cameras. Stoph Scheer (The Muppets Electric Mayhem, Henson’s Puppet Up, etc) and John Ringhofer (Half-handed Cloud, Sujan Stevens’ Illinosemakers band) are now frequent collaborators on the project.

Graham was a founding member, songwriter and synthesist of The Drums, whose debut album (Island Records / Universal) was certified silver in the UK. As a member of Sound of Ceres, a New York based dream-pop band and performance art group, he designed costumes, developed stage shows and lighting design, as well as conceptualizing and directing music videos. For Sound of Ceres’ latest album, Emerald Sea, he and the band worked with the support of world renound performance artist Marina Abramović, who also provided narration for the album and live show.

Growing up in a rural village in Appalachian Ohio, Graham spent his childhood absorbed in magic, music, juggling, and especially puppetry - being the quintessential art form for a (paradoxically) shy performer. To be able to perform without having to endure an audience’s direct attention was a revelatory and electrifying experience for this young, queer introvert. He dedicated himself to mastering every puppetry technique he could find. Practicing for hours on end in his bedroom, first with a makeshift puppet stage in front of a mirror, then with a television monitor wired to a security camera he’d stolen from a local laundromat. His teenage years were spent obsessing over music production, learning the intricacies of voltage controlled modular synthesis. Upon reaching adulthood he opened a news paper to the help wanted section and found an ad that read: “The Walt Disney Company is hiring puppeteers.” The rest is history.