Creative Adventures in Fort Hope

I just returned from another week in Northern Ontario as a volunteer artist with ArtsCan Circle. It was my first visit to the fly-in community of Eabametoong First Nation, otherwise known as Fort Hope.

I was accompanied by lovely fellow artists Sarah Morano and Marianne Girard, and our workshops were part of a conference called “Embracing Our Youth.”

We led six workshops with kids between junior kindergarten and Grade Two. As the kids were so young, we had to keep things pretty fast-paced to keep their interest.

John C. Yesno Education Centre - the school where we worked

Each workshop started with a quick introduction and sing-along, then we moved into making Artist Trading Cards.

Artist trading cards are miniature works of art about the same size as baseball cards. Each student got three cards and we had markers, crayons, collage materials and glittery things with which to adorn them. I made a few examples to show the kids some ideas:

Imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery!

When they were done the kids wrote their names on the back and the finished cards were set aside on a table.

This was the first time that I've done Artist Trading Cards as a school activity, and it was a big hit! Some kids got very attached to their cards and took back their own, although others really liked the idea of swapping. Either way, they all had a great time getting creative.

Time to swap!

Once the cards were finished, we moved into the musical portion of the workshop. Sarah played her fiddle and led some improvisational games. 

Marianne led some songs with actions, which the kids loved.

I really enjoyed being a part of the conference as when we weren't working we could take part in other conference activities:

Making bannock... mmmm!

Cedar Teachings with Bill Mequanawap

Rehearsal for Turtle Concepts Fashion Show

At the conclusion of the conference we were given these gorgeous mitts, one of the most special gifts I have ever received. The symbol beaded onto my mitts is the Thunderbird, which is the symbol of the Ojibway people.

On our last morning the Principal of the school took us out for a drive on the ice road. It was a beautiful, sunny morning, although the temperature was somewhere around -30 Celsius.

Group of Seven, anyone?

We pulled in to the airport just minutes before our flight, and climbed aboard this tiny 8-seater.

We were the only people flying that day, and it was a remarkably smooth flight back to Thunder Bay, where we transferred to a flight to Toronto.

It’s always nice to come home after being away, but this winter in Prince Edward County has been CRAZY and I think there’s more snow here than up North!

Thankfully, there's just a few days left of winter for me, as I'll be leaving shortly for Ghana, undertaking phase two of my project Puppets Without Borders. Let the creative adventures continue!

Catch you on the flip side!

Why I Volunteer

It's been a busy couple of weeks at the farm as we welcomed our first resident artist of the year, and started preparing for spring planting and building projects. But one of the things that I've been working at hardest is fundraising. I’m raising money to volunteer in Ghana, where I’ll  be doing puppetry with kids in rural villages. The project is called Puppets Without Borders, and I anticipate it could very well be one of the most interesting things I've done in my life.

It takes a lot of effort to raise all that money and coordinate my first international project, not that I mind one bit.  But it has given me cause to reflect on why I volunteer.

Kids & their shadow puppets, from my first trip to Labrador
as a volunteer with ArtsCan Circle

I got my first job as a volunteer when I was a teenager. It was playing sports with adults with disabilities, which is weird because I’ve never been into sports, but I think I was looking to get something on my resumé. From those unlikely beginnings I’ve volunteered fairly regularly: at charity events, for friends’ theatre shows, at environmental events, for a filmmaker I admired, and more recently through ArtsCan Circle.

What does a volunteer look like? Here's a few examples from
ArtsCan Circle; that's me second from the right

I don’t recall my parents ever extolling the virtues of volunteering, although all three of my sisters are also regular volunteers. I thought this was kind of interesting, so I asked them: "Why do you volunteer?"

Meagan, the eldest of my younger sisters, is a serial volunteer, having given her time to many different organizations. “I volunteer because it makes me feel connected to whichever community I happen to be living in. It also allows me to cross paths with so many diverse people that I otherwise would never meet: village children in Thailand, veterans living on the streets of Ottawa, politicians, intellectually disabled individuals... which has in turn helped me to understand where I fit in the world.”

Meagan with one of her students in Thailand

My sister Brittany volunteers because she’s passionate about the causes she supports. “In all honesty, I far prefer my volunteering with AARCS to any paid job I have ever had. I know that the dogs need people to survive, it's actually a life and death situation for them which makes it feel more needed and urgent than anything. I feel appreciated even though the animals can’t talk; their behaviour towards those that save them proves they know they got lucky.”

Brittany (R) volunteering for the Alberta Spay & Neuter Task Force

My youngest sister, Caitlin, wrote a great blog post about her experience as a volunteer teacher in the slums of India. She writes: “There are people all over the world that have every opportunity at their fingertips and waste it. Then here are these children with every ability for greatness, and will probably never get the opportunity… It took some of the poorest children in India to teach me to be happy with what I've got. So many of us look at our neighbors and wish we had more. In India, countless times I saw people look at their neighbors and be thankful for not having less. This is the most profound thing I will take with me from my time there. For a country with so many overwhelming problems, there are some things that they understand much better than we do in the West. One of these things is gratitude.”  You can read the Caitlin’s full blog post here.

Caitlin (centre, facing camera) with her students in India

So why do I volunteer? It’s not like I’m a particularly wealthy person – all the energy expended into volunteering could very well be put into making more money for myself. But I didn’t become an artist to make money. In fact I very much enjoy interacting with the world in a non-monetary way, which is one of the reasons we have so many free and charitable events at Small Pond Arts. We charge money when we need to, but what we do here is about more than just money (I know, this is a pretty radical concept for a small business). There is a purity about working hard for no pay cheque; you do it because you believe what you are doing matters. 

I think volunteering makes me a better person, and working as a volunteer artist has definitely made me a better artist. I’ve enjoyed countless new experiences, made new friends, seen new parts of the world, and felt deeply rewarded for my efforts. It's helped me discover my passion for teaching art, and has given me the gift of being a mentor, role model and friend to so many wonderful children. We all have the power to make the world a better place, and volunteering is a great way to play your part. There are so many people and organizations that can use help, and it’s not too hard to find a volunteer position that caters to your interests and availability.

I believe that volunteering encourages kindness and generosity in the world, and we could definitely use more of those. If you don’t volunteer already, maybe you’ll consider giving it a try?

If you’d like to support my trip to Ghana, our online fundraising campaign is running until May 23, 2012. Donations of any size are greatly appreciated.  You can find out all about the project, and donate online, by clicking on the image below.

How I Got Into Puppetry

"How does a puppet come into being?  It happens when someone sees an image of himself, or some aspect of the world, in the crooked glass of his imagination and gives it form, movement, and sound. Someone has the urge to bring his drawing to life and make it move and talk.  Or maybe he thinks of a sound first and gives it shape and movement.  Or it may be an intangible, like the force of the wind, that inspires him and he gives it a shape and character.  The primitive urge still applies." - Bil Baird, The Art of the Puppet

Yeti puppet by Krista Dalby

Bil Baird's attempt to explain how a puppet comes into being could just as easily be a response to how a puppeteer comes into being. "How did you get into puppetry?" is a question I'm often asked. I usually give a short answer, one that is not very truthful but is efficient for cocktail parties or classroom conversations. I say that I tried out regular theatre and found it boring. It's not much of an answer. What follows is the rather long but far more accurate response.

From my Dad: "This is Krista's first puppet performance - she was about 4 years old - I  brought a kit called DUSO (Developing Understanding of Self and Others) home from grad school [he was studying Psychology] and the world has never been the same."

Like  many other North American kids in the 1970s, I grew up with the Muppets, who were as famous at that time as any other celebrity.  When I watched Sesame Street or The Muppet Show I completely bought in to the fantasy,  rarely considering that the characters were puppets, objects being manipulated by humans. These oddballs clearly had an influence on me, as I named my first pets after them; a trio of goldfish I called Ernie, Bert and Big Bird (epic misnomer).

I grew up in Calgary, and in high school our drama class took a field trip to Lunchbox Theatre, where we saw marionettist Ronnie Burkett perform one of his first shows, Virtue Falls; I've seen many of his other shows in the 20 years since.  I loved drama class, but hated high school, so I dropped out.

Punch and Judy puppets by Krista Dalby

A few years later, I found myself in the theatre program at Mount Royal College, where I took classes in costume- and set-making, stage management, and a variety of others on the technical side of things.  For an assignment in our props class, my class partner and I built an evil wasp marionette; it was pretty well-made, from what I can recall.  I graduated from college and decided that I never wanted to do theatre again, and proceeded to spend a whole bunch of years working dead-end jobs, traveling, and partying.  I wasn't doing a whole lot creatively, but I was writing.

Even sock puppets like to get their drink on.

Eventually I went to Concordia University in Montreal and got a degree in Creative Writing.  I wanted to be a novelist.  No, a short story writer.  No, for real this time, a screenwriter.  Or maybe a tv writer? Who was I kidding?  Resistance was futile.  The theatre dragged me back and I started writing plays.  Most of them were pretty terrible, but then they started getting better.

After university I moved to Toronto, where I got a Real Job and paid off my student loans. One day I heard that artist Lisa Pijuan-Nomura was holding a puppetry workshop. I had no idea what to expect but soon discovered her beautiful vision: a flock of puppeteers would create small portable puppet shows in cardboard box theaters. During one of the famously fun Red Cabarets, we would simultaneously descend on individual tables and perform short puppet shows. I had never heard of anything like it but I'm adventurous and I was eager to give it a try. My show was about two formerly conjoined twins; one was about to depart for space camp and the other was having severe separation anxiety. The performances began and the cacophony was unbelievable, the delighted surprise of the audience and the energy of the puppeteers were a potent mix. I'd never considered myself much of a performer, but when I performed my puppet show, I was delighted to discover that it wasn't about me at all. My audience was watching these two freaky little dolls being moved around in a cardboard box. And they were riveted.

This was awesome.

The possessed look on my face says it all.

That was the night I fell in love with puppetry.

Milé reads a book to Little Milé (puppet by Krista Dalby)

Some time before this I had fallen in love with a man.   Two years later, Milé and I moved in together.   He was living in a tiny third floor apartment (which we called The Shoebox) in Toronto's West end, and the day I moved in with him I met his downstairs neighbor, David Anderson.  I knew that David was a theatre person, so I suggested that we have dinner and get to know each other.  Our dinner date rolled around, and when Milé and I showed up, David was totally distraught; his producer had just quit, and he had a show opening in just a few weeks.  As it so happened, I had just left my Real Job and had no immediate prospects, perhaps I could help him out for a few weeks?  I was hired over dinner that night, and wound up working with David at Clay & Paper Theatre for the next four years.

David Anderson of Clay & Paper Theatre

Clay & Paper creates outdoor theatre, parades and festivals using a myriad of puppetry styles, from giant puppets to hand puppets, and everything in between.  David and I wrote four plays together (soon to be five!), and I produced all of the company's shows and events from 2006 to 2010.  This was where my true education in puppetry took place.  David had been creating public space performances since the sixties, and there was no idea that was too crazy.  Turn a wheelbarrow into a puppet herd of race horses?  No problem.  Form a bicycling-oriented puppet squad?  Sounds perfectly reasonable.  Burn twenty-foot skeleton sculptures in the park?  Terrific!  I wrote, I produced, I built, I performed, I led workshops, and over the years organized hundreds of people.

That's me walking my dead frog in a baby carriage,
representing The Fear of Species Extinction,
At Clay & Paper's annual Night of Dread

Thus it was that puppetry conspired to take hold of me.  Meanwhile I had met young performer and producer Guy Doucette, who invited me to attend one of his shadow puppetry plays.  I was instantly fascinated by the art form. Guy and I became fast friends and soon we were collaborating on shadow plays.  I also met teacher Craig Morrison through Clay & Paper; he's a kick-ass designer, and soon he started collaborating with us, too. Over the last four years we've created half a dozen shadow puppetry plays, which have become increasingly complex and refined.

Shadow puppets from The History of Shadows,
designed by Craig Morrison and Guy Doucette

When I made a brief foray into the world of opera with Tapestry New Opera Works, of course my puppet-brain came with me, and I wrote two operas for puppets: The Shaman's Tale (composer Kevin Morse) with giant puppets and shadow puppets, and sock puppet opera The Perfect Match (composer Anthony Young) which was eventually made into a Bravo! short film.

Scene from The Perfect Match

I can't seem to quell this madness for puppets, and now spend a good deal of time doing puppetry workshops through ArtsCan Circle, the Ontario Arts Coucil's Artists in Education program, and at Small Pond Arts.

So there's the long answer to how I got into puppetry.  Or perhaps, how puppets got into me?

Scary Clown says "BYE BYE!"
Puppet by Krista Dalby

Scarecrow Festival

This year Small Pond Arts took over the annual Prince Edward County Scarecrow Festival, previously run by our friends at Galloping Goat Gallery.  Each year the festival's proceeds benefit a charity, and this year we chose ArtsCan Circle, an organization that I volunteer with.

We held the event on the Saturday of the Thanksgiving weekend, and the weather was absolutely glorious. 

There were a lot of things I loved about this event. 

I loved the family vibe, so evident at Thanksgiving when families come together.

I loved the way people worked together.  Making a scarecrow is just one of those things that is hard to do alone (and not nearly as much fun!).  Nobody was crying or rushing or complaining or fighting – everybody was just getting it done, in their own time.

ArtsCan volunteer David Joyce (L),  makes a scarecrow
with Executive Director Carol Teal (R)

I loved seeing people exercise their creativity.  I don’t think there were too many in the crowd that would call themselves artists, but everyone was forced to flex their creative muscles to make their scarecrow.

No two scarecrows were the same, but each had its own kooky charm.

How can a barfing pumpkin be so damn cute?!?

There’s something kind of primal about building these life-size images of ourselves, something that we all just know how to do…

Time to get topical: #Occupy Wall Street Scarecrow

And of course I loved raising money for ArtsCan Circle.  If feels really great to have so much fun AND get to make a contribution to an awesome charity.

A huge THANKS to our supporters this year: Picton Home Hardware, Second Time Around, County Photographer Phil Norton, Andrew & Emily’s No Frills, Honey Wagon Farms, George Emlaw, Galloping Goat Gallery, City Revival... we couldn't have done it without you!

See you next year!

SAVE THE DATE: Saturday October 6, 2012