In Shadows Completed!

 

I am so proud to announce that our first presentation of In Shadows premiered at the Pacific Northwest College of Art  last Thursday to a crowd of friends, family, and PNCA professors. This presentation was also my senior thesis. Everything went swimmingly except for a moment when we had to turn our volume down. We are a bunch of rock stars remember, so we express ourselves a little louder then most sensitive artists. One panel professor said "it was a joy", another seemed a little disturbed by the dark ending. It seems younger age groups have a kind of claim to shadow puppets so it may be in my favor to lighten the theme and story lines to future productions. It is my intention to make people cry a little in these plays about our abuse of nature. We have been bad...very bad. These plays will not be aimed at children. I do mention children in In Shadows as our only hope for the future, but it is not a happy ending, rather an ambiguous one, and I wouldn't want to change that.

I followed my aunt and uncle's narrations through puppetry and also had my good friend, Paul compose beautiful music for the intro, the underwater scenes, and the outro. Here are more pictures:

Scene One:

Scene Two:

Scene Three:

Scene Four:

I'm very proud of this production. It was a great collaboration with wonderful friends such as Paul a.k.a Verne Sheaperd (music man and sound expert) Jessie Dettwiler (puppet builder extraordinaire, and assistant director) Stirling Myles (puppeteer exacto knife ninja and best boyfriend eva!) Andrew Moore (puppet builder and scene composition) Katie Leaper (puppet builder and lighting director) and Ann Heideman (puppet builder and tea ninja) Thank you all!!! Love you mucho! Last but not least I want to thank my aunt and uncle who let me expose their lives through shadow puppets. They are very inspirational people who have lived on big beautiful wooden boats for 20 plus years and have brought up my two cousins, Alyce and Darby, on these boats as they sailed the oceans blue all over the world. ...these oceans blue aren't so blue in some areas of the world. I speak specifically about the great pacific garbage patch that floats in the Pacific, but there are other garbage patches in the the Atlantic and oil stains all of the world's oceans. It's sad. I'm not one for preaching but it's good to be aware of these problems that face us all.

My puppet troupe is called Shadow Slang, and I will blog about future productions.

It was in my Easter basket!

 

I'm not a great commemorater of Easter, it's true. Easter came this year and I found myself missing my family and remembering our random acknowledgements of Easter's past when I was growing up. I remember a lot of candy, painting eggs, and occasionally putting together pussy willow Easter trees. I never minded celebrating spring, and colorful candy shells seemed to compliment spring colors so nicely. I liked taking that walk with my little brother and mother, while my father played big bunny man and hid treats all over our respective yard. When Andrew and I were older, my mother worked at an apartment building for single mothers that were fleeing their unfortunate situations from abusive partners, or just needed to live in a place that supported them financially and emotionally. It was at this place where my family took Easter to a whole new level of ridiculous. My father would dress up as the bunny man and scatter candy and colored eggs (which we spent the night coloring the night before) all over the park area behind the apartment building. There was a big window that the residents and their kids could watch the dramatic bunny lay out his treats. My father's performance resembled a combination of Groucho Marx and Chaplin in a rabbit costume. He would fall over dramatically, and then stare up at the window methodically twitching his nose like all rabbits do. Everyone in that room looking down at him were in stitches from laughing so hard. Even the young believers of the big bunny who were looking at this strange iconic childhood myth for the first time in their little lives laughed hysterically. I wonder if that first glance married them to the idea of the Easter bunny looking like my father's performance. I'm sure they never saw a better bunny.

Anyway I certainly did digress there. This Easter I checked my facebook to find a long ago commission of mine available in t-shirt form. I created four paintings of Easter retold by my friend Dan White, who directed a romantic zombie comedy movie. This commission was given to me two years ago when I was traveling in the NE. I was visiting old stomping grounds of mine, and was commissioned to paint four paintings. One: of Jesus breaking bread, Two: of Jesus on the cross. Three: Jesus waking up as a zombie and gnawing the arm off of a roman soldier, and Four: Jesus being attacked by roman soldiers and angels. These paintings are in this movie. Apparently two years after these were created t-shirts were made, one of which arrived for me in the mail today. It's all very strange and random, but I will gladly take the exposure. So if your interested get your t-shirts today!

A Volcano!! I drawed one.

So I saw this thing online that said something like: " if you've never jumped from the carpet to the sofa to avoid lava as a kid then you've never had a childhood." or something to that effect. A few days after seeing this very true little blurp I was assigned to draw a volcano as an info graphic. The following are process pictures for this project. I do not have the very final piece on here because the writing on it is too small for you to read. Basically though the final featured this painting with post it note looking things explaining volcanoes, dust mites and cats....you know, the important things in life. phase one:

phase two:

final:

The original is not this blue just so you know all y'all. I enjoyed this project, it was nice to take a break from shadow puppets. When I finished it I realized it much resembled my relationship with my room mate at the moment, go figure. I really hadn't intended this to be a portrait of my home life, but art is so mysterious, no? Anyway I will be heading to the South West next week to Tucson AZ. I will be visiting my family and building paper puppets in the desert. Romantic don't you think? I need to figure out how to pack all my boots...

Hasta Luego!

It's lovely bobbing along on the bottom of the beautiful briny sea...

....so says Angela Lansbury in Bednobs and Broomsticks. What a wonderful movie that was, and a huge inspiration for me! I have been singing it for a couple of weeks now, especially while I'm cutting out these underwater scenes. Yeah, I'm a dork.

I lugged our immense stage up from the basement to the living room all by my lonesome today. On top of that,  it was a beautiful sunny day here in Portland but I drew the curtains and covered the windows with thick blankets so I could get better shots of these shadow puppets here. Yeah! What?! Pretty good right?! All for you.

These are the recent shadow puppets that we built for the first scenes of the new play. My uncle Sugar and his wife Leslie narrate us through their first encounters with the ocean as Waver Clamor Bellow (the band) weave in and out of the scenes and narrations with melodic lullabies. It will be very beautiful.

In Oceans

"I didn't want to turn the world into a map. I wanted to turn the map into a world."

...so says Donavan Hahn in  'Moby Duck: an accidental odyssey : the true story of 28,800 bath toys lost at sea and of the beachcombers, oceanographers, environmentalists, and fools, including the author, who went in search of them'

I intend to do the same with this shadow puppet play about the ocean. I am charting out a sea world that stars some sea captains and many many fishies. This book is exposing me to all kinds of currents of information about iconography, myth, plastic pollutions, and the many tides of our imaginations. I encourage everyone interested in the state of our degrading oceans and environment to pick this book up. It's a truly fascinating read, not to mention fun to base a shadow puppet play on.

Here are my puppets in progress. Remember these are the first drafts, and they will be put behind a stage screen and illuminated from behind, so eventually they will look very different.

I'm pretty excited, I will not lie 'bout it.

In Shadows

My shadow puppet series about the environment, In Shadows is well on it's way to being AMAZING! Here's me with the world, putting some masking tape on those Greenland borders, you know, it was your usual Sunday here at the ol' abode. The troupe met up to rehearse for the last production of The Waver Clamor Bellow Picture show, which will be at The Waypost, Feb, 26th. I love my troupe. We are a really great crew. I'm going to miss my brother Andrew ( puppeteer builder and performer extraordinaire) and his lady Katie (lighting director extraordinaire) and their new baby man Juniper!! They are taking their new baby on tour to Tucson and Pennsylvania for some grandparent time. Meanwhile I am here in Portland putting together our new shadow puppet show which is the first of an eventual series of environemtal themed plays. This here first play is all about the ocean! What do I know about the ocean you ask? Well I interviewed my sea captain uncle and my aunt who have sailed the ocean blue and have lived on a wooden boat for 20 plus years! Impressive, no? They have lots to say about the ocean.

Paul, who is pictured here, is my Waver Clamor Bellow partner and has composed some beautiful sound scapes for this aqueous endeavor. The first two scenes are thought up and now it's time for me to start cutting out some puppets. So much work is ahead....

Clinkers!

Mr. Darcy!!! The ultimate Mr. Mysterious! tall, dark, handsome, and snarky! How can a clever girl resist?! I finished this the other day and I'm not crazy about it. I like the facial expressions, but there are so many construction and composition problems here. I'm going to call it the first draft, and make a second painting. I love this subject matter. I have read P and P three or four times, and have seen every movie adaptation available out there. I remember the first time I read Pride and Prejudice, I thought  the first couple of chapters were boring until she met Mr. Darcy at a ball and he slighted her!!! what?! That's not what's supposed to happen in a dressed up romance novel! I was hooked! Oh the tension! The sex! Sometimes when I paint or cut out shadow puppets I have a period piece, costume drama going on in the background. My boyfriend usually sits on the other side of the room and scowls at the the girlyness of it all. One day we came up with another name for these types of movies. We call these movies CLINKERS. These movies are called Clinkers, because there is a lot of clinking of tea cups that happens. This is what  Clinker dialogue sounds like:

CONSTABLE MYLES: "What?! out of class marriage?!" (clink, clink, clink)

MRS. EDWARD JAMES: "I know! I can't believe it! Well, it's not my place to say but..." (clink, clink, clink)

CONSTABLE MYLES: "Oh I know! A spot of tea?"

MRS. EDWARD JAMES: "Yes please, and those lovely biscuits." (clink, clink, clink)

I love me some Clinkers.

Pals at Palio's

It's so funny how you can labor over a painting and or drawing and get very little response or attention over the finished piece. On the other hand sometimes you can get so much praise over a ten minute sketch! It's a little discouraging. This happened to me recently with these little doodles I did of my co-workers at my coffee shop. When it's slow I do a quick sketch of a coworker  with a quote that represents them and makes fun of them. EVERYONE wants to talk about them! Our credit card machine is slow and old school, so when we ring up customers with their credit card there's an awkward moment where I or the customer have a moment of silence to fill with some forced chit chat. These doodles hang right above the credit card machine, so often the customer's eyes trail towards them, and then many delighted comments occur. It feels good, I can't lie. Today my boss suggested I do some of these sketches on nice paper, and frame them. Apparently someone came in today and asked my manager if I was available for commissions. I should work on this...a future is here somewhere.

The Language of Shapes

Hey All! Lets talk shadow puppets. I have a shadow puppet troupe, don't you know?! Right now we are calling ourselves The Wave Clamor Bellow Picture show but that is only because we perform with the band Waver Clamor Bellow. This band kicks some major behind... don't believe me? come see them perform at the very famous Christmas Horse venue Sunday, January 29th. Waver Clamor the band and the shadow puppet troupe are two different entities so the troupe needs it's own name. I may have thought of a name but I'm wondering if any of you have any better ideas? So my name is Shapes Language. Why would I call our troupe this? Well the back story is there's this scene in our shadow puppet show in which the main character learns 'the language of shapes' from a frightening alien whom she befriends. I also create these shadow puppets by connecting and manipulating different shapes. So beat that name Oh ye' mass of followers! Or tell me why my name isn't so good. I dare you!

And another thing...I am working on a new play right now. I am very excited to have Waver Clamor Bellow continuing to collaborate with me! my brother, (and puppet builder + performer) said it best during a shadow puppet meeting a few months ago when he said: "We're a team now!" How's that for sentimentalism! Yes it's true we are a team, a damn good one.

This new play will be the first of a series about man MADE NATURAL DISASTERS! whoa! I will concentrate first, on the oceans. I love the ocean don't you? The ocean is serene and calming and yet so very moody and powerful and capable of such destruction!!! Remember that remarkable google satellite footage of last year's Tsunami in Japan?! That was an ocean wave! What incredible force, right? And with this power we mess and pollute and waste. Man are we in trouble. So that is what my new shadow puppet show is about.