Projected shadow puppet crankie based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, commissioned by The Peabody School of Music.  Paper and Tyvek scroll. Poster board and foam core puppets and overhead projections.

This shadow puppet show is a combination of various shadow puppetry techniques, incorporating a pop-up book, lazy susans, moving human figures, and overhead projectors. Everything was hand cut with a hobby knife.

This piece was originally performed with Tim Kearly, Valeska Populoh, Eamon Epsey, Channing Showalter, Lisa Kraus, Nick Sjostrom,  and Burke Sampson at The Peabody School of Music on Halloween night of 2016, accompanied by an original musical score and sound effects by Nick Sjostrom and Burke Sampson.

In 2015 I collaborated with Cortina productions, a film company that makes historical films for museums, approached me about making a giant shadow puppet crankie* for a film, I was pretty excited.
The film is about a traveling story teller, who uses a crankie to tell oral histories of the American revolution through 6 different people who lived through it. (among them, a housewife, a native american man, and an african american man). These are actual oral histories of people who lived at the time. It was an inspiring and educational experience working with producer, Brent Feito and a curator/historian, Katherine Gruber of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.
I got to spend months researching, story boarding, making sample scenes, and finally making the final piece. The images are based on artwork and aesthetics of the period. In order to make the deadline friend and colleague, Caleb Stine, worked full time hand cutting paper and glueing down scenes with me for over a month. Some other folks who lent a hand during construction were Annie Howe, Lisa Krause, Christine Sajecki, and Eamon Espey. We ended up with three scrolls, some of which are over eighty feet long. Everything was hand cut with a hobby knife.

It was especially moving to be working on this piece about these questions of freedom and human rights as the riots broke out in Baltimore this year. It felt all the more meaningful and powerful to be revisiting these questions in my work.
After the crankie was done, I finally arrived in Virginia, where they had been filming all the stories I had illustrated on the crankie in live action. Michael Lamason and Valeska Populoh of Baltimore's Black Cherry Puppet Theater came to Virginia where we performed the crankie in period dress for the film.
This has been an exciting and challenging project. The rough cut looks great and I can't wait to see the the final edit of the film. In the meantime there is an exhibit of the making of the film on display at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown.
The film has been  available to the public since December 2016.

*A crankie or moving panorama is a scroll of artwork in a box, often illustrating a story or song that it is presented with. The ream of paper or fabric rolled around 2 posts, which is then pulled across the front, much like film in an old camera.

This shadow puppet show takes us on a journey into the past and into the marshes of Georgia, telling the story of a boy who discovers a family secret, faces it, become transformed by it. This piece is a combination of various shadow puppetry techniques, incorporating mirrors and moving human figures, overhead projectors, and a crankie*. Everything was hand cut with a hobby knife.

This piece was originally performed with The Kearly family, Valeska Populoh, Caleb Stine, and Jay Dilisio at The Peabody School of Music on Halloween night of 2015, accompanied by an original musical score by Caleb Stine.

*A crankie or moving panorama is a scroll of artwork in a box, often illustrating a story or song that it is presented with. The ream of paper or fabric rolled around 2 posts, which is then pulled across the front, much like film in an old camera.
(Video forthcoming.)

I spent the first part of this year working on a shadow puppet show for a music video for Baltimore band, Wye Oak. I had a lot of fun creating the characters for this underwater world and the process of working with film was a new and exciting experience for me.

Video Credits:
Songwriters: Wye Oak (Jenn Wasner, Andy Stack)
Producers: Anne and Stewart Stack
Director of Photography: Michael Patrick O'Leary
Art Director/Paper cutter/puppeteer: Katherine Fahey
Editor: Owen Lang
Puppeteer: Scott Dennison
Puppeteer: Shari Edelson
Paper Cutters: Katie Field, Scott Dennison, Robin Reid, Brook Kearley, Annabel Kearley, Shari Edelson, Elodie Rabilloud
Gaffer: Matt Brennan
B Camera Operator: Nick Midwig
Camera Assistant: Neal Golden

Photos by Neal J Golden

Talk to your Bees is a shadow puppet crankie (see definition below). It's based on The Bee Boy Song by Peter Bellamy, about superstitions around bees and beekeeping.

All papercut artwork on the scroll is hand-cut. This piece is normally shared live and in person in a darkened room. 

*A crankie or moving panorama is a scroll of artwork in a box, often illustrating a story or song that it is performed with. The ream of paper, tyvek,  or fabric is rolled around 2 posts, which is then pulled across the front, much like film in an old camera.
 

In 1806 two sisters in England published a book of thier peotry fro children. One of them is a song sung all over the world to this day. This Shadow Puppet Crankie was a commision for Kentucky Educational Television Foundation based on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Video available here. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KZLDh4N9YY