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2019 Baltimore Crankie Fest!

2019 Baltimore Crankie Fest!

Watch the world’s greatest stories unroll before your eyes! Baltimore's beloved festival of scrolled panoramas known as crankies, returns for it's 6th year of fireside wonder. A full lineup of artists and musicians will be announced in the coming weeks.

For 2019, we have added a Sunday matinee giving you four chances to witness the magic of the Crankie Fest. All performances will feature the same lineup of artists and musicians.

FRI JAN 4 | 8PM

SAT JAN 5 | 4:30PM & 8PM

SUN JAN 6 | 4:30PM

Crankie Fest is made possible that to the generous support of John Cammack & Kimberly Warren and Mark & Vicki Collins

Meet the 2019 Crankie Makers!

Addie and Benjamin
Addie Best is a printmaker, crankie artist, and singer from Confluence, Pennsylvania. Her upbringing was steeped in making, craft, and traditional music; her pen and ink crankies and woodblock prints reflect both her love of age-old songs and ballads and traditional printing techniques. Addie’s love of traditional music stems from years of dancing in her childhood kitchen to old-time banjo and fiddle. Addie currently lives in Providence where she is studying printing making at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Benjamin Foss is a musician, luthier and wood turner currently based in Swanville, Maine. He fell in love with traditional music at a young age, and began playing fiddle and contra dancing in his hometown of Rehoboth, Massachusetts. Inspired by a desire to learn to play fretted instruments, he began building and restoring guitars, mandolin family instruments, and banjos, and recently moved his shop up to Maine where he turns kitchenware and bowls and does commission work on stringed instruments.

Benjamin and Addie met at Maine Fiddle Camp in 2016, where they discovered their shared love of traditional music and dance, making things, and crankies. Since then they have explored a joyous collaboration in both art and life, sharing both their creations and love. This collaboration has included mailing a crankie scroll back and forth from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania to work on it together, evenings of sharing and learning songs, and many rounds of Boggle (Addie loses every time).

Katherine Fahey
Artist, puppeteer, and designer, Katherine Fahey embodies a community of musicians, artists, and writers where elegance and authenticity are signal virtues. She has been working as a professional artist for over ten years. Her cut paper and prints have become music posters, shadow puppets, portraits, set design and animation, including lush music videos for musicians such as Wye Oak and ellen cherry. Katherine spent years designing and printing posters, shirts, and CD covers for musicians before becoming a performer in her own right through the form of shadow puppetry. She was drawn to this art from because of its accessible, intimate, and communal nature. She has performed locally and nationally at festivals and shows. Last year she finished her largest shadow puppet show yet, a moving panorama (or crankie) for a live action film for Cortina Productions and the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation and is currently working a crankie for a public TV station in Kentucky and her third commissioned shadow show for the Peabody School of Music. Katherine is the only artist to be featured every year at the Baltimore Crankie Festival.

KAL
Kevin Kallaugher (KAL) is the international award-winning editorial cartoonist for The Economist magazine of London and The Baltimore Sun.
In a distinguished career than spans 40 years, Kal has created over 8000 cartoons and 140 magazine covers. His resumé includes six collections of his published work, exhibitions in a dozen countries, awards and honors in seven.

These awards include Feature Cartoonist of the Year (UK), The Thomas Nast Prize (Germany) Cartoon of the Year (Europe), and The 2017 Berryman award (US), Herblock Prize (US) and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (US).

The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons said of Kevin "Commanding a masterful style, Kallaugher stands among the premier caricaturists of the (twentieth) century."

Liz Downing
Liz Downing came to Maryland from Alabama to study painting with Grace Hartigan. She has since created music, sets and costumes for plays and concerts in groups such as Lambs Eat Ivy, Lurch and Holler, Old Songs and Mole Suit Choir, in venues from basements to museums and universities. Liz created her submission to the Crankie Festival at the Ucross Foundation Residency in Wyoming and will be singing the crankie's story with collaborator, Hanna Olivegren.

Elissa Blount Moorhead & C. Ryan Patterson
Elissa Blount Moorhead explores the poetics of quotidian Black life. She is a Baltimore-based producer, artist, writer, curator and lecturer. She has produced public art events, gallery exhibitions, films screenings, and education programs since the early 90s
C. Ryan Patterson is an artist based in Baltimore, MD. He enjoys drawing in public, commuting by bicycle, researching and writing about the history of public artworks in Baltimore. His artwork often combines the techniques of cut paper and comics drawing to create narrative illustrations of urban life. He often collaborates with family and friends on puppetry projects such as the Porch Puppets collective (with Rachel Valsing and Mary Pulcinella), or murals and community art events. In 2017 he assisted with the artistic design and paper-cut illustrations used in Elissa Blount Moorhead's "As Of A Now" public film installation.

Valeska Populoh
Valeska Maria Populoh works as an artist, educator and cultural organizer in her adopted hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. Embracing a wide array of tactics, from puppetry to participatory performance, Valeska's work is motivated by an interest in healing and repair, in our relationships to each other and to the natural world.

Emily Schubert
Emily Schubert is the co-curator of the Baltimore Crankie Festival and will serve as the event MC for 2019. Emily Schubert is an interdisciplinary artist working mainly in the worlds of puppetry, storytelling, performance, and collage. Enthralled by the emotive power and depth of expression achieved through puppetry and storytelling, she believes that within these realms lies a source of real-life magic that is deficient in much of our daily lives. This will be the second Baltimore Crankie festival she has helped co-curate and when she is not making puppets or crazy costumes she can be found growing veggies and flowers or walking around on stilts.

Myra Su
Myra Su is a narrative artist specializing in storytelling through puppetry and live theater. Currently based in Chicago, Myra has been an active member in the puppetry community since 2013. Her primary medium is shadow puppetry but her work also includes experimentations with bunraku, crankies, video, and taxidermy. Her work has also expanded to collaborations outside of theater, with indie bands and musicians.

In addition to her independent work, she is currently a touring performer with Manual Cinema. She has also worked with other puppetry/spectacle companies such as Redmoon and Blair Thomas & Co.

Event Contact

Creative Alliance
410-276-1651

Event Details

Friday, January 4, 2019, 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Saturday, January 5, 2019, 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Saturday, January 5, 2019, 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Sunday, January 6, 2019, 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Prices:
$15, Members (+ $3 at the door)
$18, General Admission (+3 at the door)
410-276-1651

Location

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