Monday, November 7, 2011

A Crankie Folk Singer


Yesterday was a good day.  A group of six artists spent the day at the Lillian Street studio working on a variety of projects.  Elaine Fuller continued to paint the walls vibrant colors.  Beth Rogers and Chris Fondi built some storage units and worked on Beth's trestle table.  Joyce Compton made origami shopping bags from newspaper and pitched in on various projects when help was needed.  I built a quick drawing table.  It has mismatched legs, two of which are made from a tree branch.  Elaine will be adding touches of color to this one but most of it will remain wood. 
Ellen Gozian (the crankie folk singer) made her first visit to Lillian.  She wanted me to build a crankie box.  A crankie is a gizmo that displays a story scroll to illustrate a folksong.  It took a bit of design work but here is the crankie that I built for her.

                                            
Ellen brought an illustrated the scroll made with a paper collage technique.  The scroll attaches to dowel rods and the top lifts off to allow for changing scrolls.  We also built the crankie so that it can be back lit or front lit.  With back lighting the applied paper cutouts will appear as silhouettes.   With front lighting the colored papers will show.  When the crankie was complete Ellen gave us a performance.
It was the first showtime at the Lillian Street studio!  A good time was had by all.  I'm looking forward to attending one of her shows to see the crankie in a public performance.

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