The Story of the Forest Creature
Every year on the Sunday before Halloween, Jessica Hatfield surprises visitors at the San Carlos Farmers Market as she suits up in a towering, stilted forest creature with bark, leaves, and shrubs all over. Influenced by her regard for wildlife and nature, Jessica’s costume is a monster with tree-like elements, complete with a prehistoric-inspired head.
A former student of Heather Elementary and Tierra Linda Middle School, Jessica brings this magical character to life for the San Carlos community, evolving it annually to give audiences something new. Her appearances have become a tradition, adding a touch of excitement to the Halloween season.
We’ve had a chance to interview this amazing lady, a resident of Redwood City and an artist + videographer with a passion for wildlife ecology. She shares a beautiful story about her grandmother – the one who sparked her passion for arts and crafts at an early age…
Interview with Jessica Hatfield
I understand it was your grandmother who inspired you to make the costume, and that you’ve been making costumes with her for several years? Can you please tell us more about your grandmother, and how you made costumes with her when you were young?
Yes, my Grandma Joan has been so supportive, contributing hundreds of hours to help sew garments, paper mache masks, and meticulously attach fake leaves for my various costumes over the years. One of our very first collaborations involved modifying her own wedding dress so I could reenact a historical figure for a middle school project!
As an artist herself with experience sewing all of my mom’s childhood skating dresses, her technical skills and creative eye have been instrumental to bringing each of my costume concepts to life. Additionally, at age six, my grandma took me to see the Lion King on Broadway – the mesmerizing costume designs and puppetry for which continue to serve as a fundamental inspiration for my work today.
What were these costumes you made when you were young, and how did you use them?
Besides the historical figure project in middle school, the first couple costumes my grandma and I made together were my 2013 Satyr and 2014 Harpy, both of which involved building unique features such as hoof stilts or PVC wings to complete the creature’s mythological appearances. Since then, every costume has been iterative, building on the designs, materials, and techniques that did and didn’t work to create the next big thing – like a costume on four stilts.
I of course enjoy participating in costume contests whenever possible. However, the most rewarding part of completing a new costume for me is the chance to get dressed up for a night on the town just to see people’s reactions to it. I have long considered Halloween to be the perfect occasion to let my creativity run wild on something big and elaborate that I can actually showcase in public without getting looked at funny!
There could have been many stilted costumes to make, but what made you want to do “Korpi the Forest Creature”?
The inspiration to build my own four-stilted costume originated from watching Melissa Irwin’s creation on YouTube back in 2010. However, the project wasn’t logistically or financially realistic for me until 2019 after a friend donated a pair of junkyard-sourced kangaroo stilts to the cause.
With the pieces finally coming together, the design behind the stilt costume I ultimately developed came first from my lifelong passion for ecology and second from the development of my D&D character, Korpi. As a druid dryad, Korpi encapsulates the balance of life and death in nature, and plays a crucial role as the protector of the forest. This character’s journey significantly influenced the iterative design and personality of my Forest Creature costume.
When you won the grand prize at “Live with Kelly and Ryan”, can you please tell us more about it? The opportunities that happened afterwards?
Participating in the 2021 “Live with Kelly and Ryan” Halloween special marked a high point in my costume design hobby. Being in the midst of the pandemic, the contest accommodated remote entries, enabling me to join without shipping my costume to the studio in New York. My “handler,” Emily, and I set up a makeshift studio in my driveway and took part in a one-hour Zoom recording with other contestants.
Although during the episode taping we discovered that the Forest Creature had made it into the finals, the grand prize winner wasn’t revealed until the live TV premiere, which was a truly exhilarating moment! Following the contest, I was honored with invitations from the mayor to make an appearance at a city hall meeting, participate in a community “story time” event at the library, and ultimately became a frequent figure at pumpkin patches across the Peninsula.
What was the most unforgettable or funniest reaction you’ve ever got as the Forest Creature roaming around town?
Every Halloween, the Forest Creature costume has sparked a range of funny and memorable reactions. It’s especially entertaining to see the mixed reactions of children who will follow me around, simultaneously scared and fascinated by it. Once, a particularly brave child only began to cry after I took the costume off, devastated because “the monster went away!”
What upgrades might you consider for the costume? Perhaps recorded monster sounds to give the creature a voice?
When it comes to refining the Forest Spirit costume, I have considered several fun upgrades including sound effects and improved articulation. However, my top priority with each new iteration definitely comes down to reducing the strain a 4-stilt costume has on my back! Although the 2021 design was my absolute favorite, it was challenging to wear for extended periods due to its weight.
In the future, I would love to either recast the head in a lighter material like carbon fiber, or move on to a new, 2-stilt body plan entirely to maintain a more comfortable posture and also free up my hands to enable more elaborate puppetry mechanics!
Can you please tell us more about your experiences as wildlife / ecology conservation advocate? About your childhood and your internship in South Africa?
Since I was a child, I’ve always had an intense passion for the natural world, which initially led me to pursue veterinary science. Although my professional goals have since changed, my pre-veterinary internship in South Africa played a significant role in shaping that trajectory:
Firstly, it completely transformed my understanding of complex conservation matters through hands-on game capture, treatment, and management strategies – something I could talk about for hours! Second and more importantly, it introduced me to the intersection of videography, art, and environmental education, which has since led me to become a professional videographer today.
Ending Note
Jessica’s longer-term hope is to inspire people to be creative. A lot of people she meets think they have to be born with talent do art but the truth, she maintains, is that “nobody is born inherently good at anything” and it takes motivation and practice.
To our readers: Excellence and dedication to your art will bring you to places you’ve never dreamed of. So keep it up, and always make an effort to share your talent with the world. And spend time with your grandparents. There’s so much they can teach you.
Sources:
- Jessica Hatfield’s Official Websites and LinkedIn Profile
- Jessica Hatfield’s Youtube Channel
- “The Costume that won big on ‘Live with Kelly and Ryan’ was created by a Redwood City Woman, from Climate RWC
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