jeghetto.com

Ever seen a marionette made of khaki pants, PVC pipes, or human flesh? OK, maybe not that last one. But Chapel Hill puppet builder and puppeteer Tarish “Jeghetto” Pipkins is undoubtedly semi-revolutionizing a centuries-old craft. Over the past year, his ingenuity has made such a splash in the puppeteering world that when the big shots at New York’s Furry Puppet Studios were hired to create the lookalike puppets in Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams’s “WTF” video, Pipkins was called in at the last minute to rebuild the puppets so they could do precise dance moves. 5P1N0K10 (Spinokio), Jeghetto’s own puppet hip-hopera, has had two successful runs here at home, and he was recently named codirector of Chapel Hill’s Beat Making Lab, where he teaches young people how to build and manipulate puppets. Looking to be wowed? Find him busking on a corner near you.