Quintron & Miss Pussycat

Residency
Artistic Rising: Climate in Crisis
Website
http://www.quintronandmisspussycat.com/
Type of work
Performing Artist
Location
Louisiana
Year
2023

Quintron and Miss Pussycat created a live puppet show about extreme weather events, which utilized a “Wildlife Organ” built and installed by Quintron at A Studio in the Woods. The Wildlife Organ is envisioned as a musical instrument that uses specially-housed microphones to intimately capture and process the broad spectrum of natural sounds on site, routing each sound back to a playable, musical keyboard.

Quintron has been inventing electronic gadgets and creating genre-defying noise, soundscape, and house rocking dance music in New Orleans for over 20 years, much of it in collaboration with artist / puppeteer Panacea Theriac aka “Miss Pussycat”. In 1999, Quintron helped to foster a DIY analog synth revival with a patented instrument called the DRUM BUDDY, a light activated analog drum machine which creates murky, low-fidelity, rhythmic patterns. These experiments eventually led to Quintron’s focus on a weather-controlled drone synthesizer called Weather Warlock and a website devoted to streaming its music called Weather For The Blind.

Miss Pussycat began her career in art and puppetry as a child in the Southern Baptist Church of Antlers Oklahoma as part of the Christian Puppet Youth Ministry. She later moved to New Orleans and started a secret nightclub in her house, called Pussycat Caverns, which hosted bands and all types of performance in a unique and lively atmosphere. Today, and for over 20 years, she is busy presenting live puppet shows in rock clubs, libraries, and secret clubhouses all around the world, and singing and playing maracas with Quintron.

Her puppets and their worlds often become the genesis for other art projects, such as ceramic statues, paintings, videos, and electronic soundtracks. Four albums of her puppet show soundtracks have been released over the years; on Hanson Records, Skin Graft, and Terror Vision, as well various singles.

Her puppet movies include: Trixie and the Treetunks (for VBS), The Mystery in Old Bathbath, North Pole Nutrias (starring the Al Scramuzza and featuring the voice of Sheriff Harry Lee), and Electric Swamp (featuring the voice of Antoinette K-Doe and telling a story of Formosan termites and the Emperor of the Universe). In 2017 she created a character driven short, Frenchy and Jett, for Disney.

Art shows and installations are an important aspect of Miss Pussycat’s work. She has had exhibits at The New Orleans Museum of Art (Parallel Universe: Quintron and Miss Pussycat at City Park), and the Center for Contemporary Art in New Orleans (ANTHROPOMORPHIZER!). In 2017 she was a featured artist for New Orleans art triennial, Prospect 4, and had an exhibit (Cardboard Demon Mask) at The Ogden Museum of Southern Art. In 2019 her show The Puppet Worlds of Miss Pussycat was at the Galveston Art Center in Galveston Texas. Recent art projects include solo exhibits at the Webb Gallery in Waxahachie Texas, the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum in Biloxi Mississippi.

Miss Pussycat’s most widely known role though is performing puppet shows, singing, and playing maracas in the band Quintron and Miss Pussycat. Together they present live organ-driven party music and puppet shows all over the world. Their latest album is Goblin Alert on Goner Records.

Photo by Caitlyn Ridenour