Puppeteer and stone carver was part of Galway's art life

Pat Bracken: PUPPETEER AND stone carver Pat Bracken, who died suddenly in Galway at the age of 59, has been described as a “…

Pat Bracken:PUPPETEER AND stone carver Pat Bracken, who died suddenly in Galway at the age of 59, has been described as a "brilliant, talented, humorous" artist who both "loved life and defied it".

Close friend, film-maker Art O’ Briain, believes that Bracken would have endorsed the lines from poet Robert Frost for his own epitaph:

“I would have written of me on my stone

“I had a lovers’ quarrel with the world.”

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Born in Dublin, he attended Holy Faith primary school in Francis Street and O’Connell’s Christian Brothers School in North Richmond Street. He studied at the National College of Art and Design for a year before serving an apprenticeship in stone.

His family were seven-generation stonemasons and he trained in Dublin with his father and older brothers in stonecarving.

It was “ironic” then, as O’Briain noted in a tribute to him at his funeral in St Nicholas’s Collegiate Church, Galway, last Monday, that he should have moved from the “solid, hard immutability of stone to the “soft, pliable malleability of foam and latex”.

He was interested in art from a young age, drawing and painting, and began developing his many creative talents in Dublin with the Focus Theatre.

O'Briain first met him when he was a producer in RTÉ, looking for a puppetmaker for the new television programme, Pajos Junkbox.

He arranged to meet in him in Bewley’s Café on Westmoreland Street, in September 1986. Bracken arrived with a canvas bag and was initially shy and deferential.

At the time, the café had booths with waitress service, and they secured one, where Bracken pulled out a “charmingly grotesque potato-faced latex hand-puppet”.

As he did so, O’Briain recalls, an elderly waitress approached. The puppet came to life. “Howya gorgeous! Would you risk it for a biscuit? I’d say you would. I would.”

“Don’t be so cheeky,” the waitress replied, scuffing him with her cloth. “You’re very bold.”

“Ah, give us a chance, love.What d’ya think o’ me? Amn’t I smashin’?’,”the puppet continued.

“I think you should be on telly,” the waitress responded, walking away with her tray.

For the RTÉ producer, it was the “shortest audition ever”. He had found his puppetmaker and a puppeteer, who created a family of characters, Kit and Kaboodle, Amelia, Bridie, Sniff, the Captain and others.

“He was brilliant, he was awkward, he was late, he was hard-working and he was recognised for his zany, humorous performing skills week in, week out,” O’Briain says.

When Bracken moved west, the “quintessential Dubliner” quickly became involved in the busy Galway arts scene of the late 1980s and 1990s, commuting initially while he was still working with RTÉ and then basing himself in the west full time.

He helped to form the Galway Puppet Theatre with Mattie Hynes and Annette Moore. On Saturday mornings in Shop Street, Galway, Bracken’s Bridie would perform, among other puppets, roaring insults and making “raunchy suggestions” to passersby.

Bracken also continued with his stonework, many examples of which can be seen around Galway, such as outside Dillon’s Claddagh Ring Shop on Quay Street and outside the Galway City Museum.

He was commissioned to create a work for the Town Hall Theatre, commemorating one of his close friends from Dublin, the late Diceman Thom McGinty.

Bracken’s decision to study ceramics at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology – where he had run workshops himself years before – “turned him around”, according to family. He had recently completed his BA and sent a text message to O’Briain: “I’ve just knocked a chip off both me shoulders.”

Bracken had intended to pursue a master’s degree and had more travel plans. His last public engagement was as one of the leading participants in the recent Macnas parade at this year’s Galway Arts Festival.

He is survived by his son Seán, father Stephen, and siblings Margaret, Jack, Susan, Stephen and Angela, and by his former partners Trish Connolly and Fiona Collins.


Pat Bracken: born, March 12th, 1951; died, July 29th, 2010.