Jacob Graham is a queer Brooklyn based multidisciplinary artist with a focus on puppetry, lighting, and music. His dedicated use of antiquated tools and obsolete technologies is an intentional departure from modern, computerized working methods. It is an effort to always be moving towards tangibility, which he considers to be the key component of his signature mid-century gothic style.

In 2015 Graham launched The Creatures of Yes, a puppet web series as part of the VICE Creators Project 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) 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 indie-pop band The Drums, whose debut album (Island Records / Universal) was certified gold in the United Kingdom. Then 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 completely absorbed in esoteric performance art forms: parlor magic, juggling, voltage controlled electronic music, 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. After school he was hired by the Walt Disney Company where he spent thousands of hours perfecting many different styles of puppetry. He currently lives in Brooklyn NY with his husband, they hope to one day have a dog.