Please Note: Creative Alliance practices dynamic ticket pricing. As the show becomes more popular the price does increase. Please buy early to ensure the best price.
Members get ticket fees waived!
The festival, the largest of its kind in the country, works with artists to showcase crankies from Baltimore and beyond! A crankie is basic in concept: it is a scroll that provides the visual narration to a story or song. Versions of the crankie have been around for hundreds of years, if not longer; their most recent iteration is directly linked to moving panoramas popular in the 19th Century. In recent years, artists have begun to embrace the intimacy of the format, creating multi-layered, immersive experiences for audiences.
Valeska Populoh
Valeska Populoh (she/her) works as a teacher, artist and cultural organizer in her adopted hometown of Baltimore, MD. Embracing a wide array of tactics, from puppetry and printmaking, to art builds and participatory performance, Valeska is motivated by an interest in healing and repair, in deepening our relationships to each other and to all our kin. Valeska’s creative practice seeks rich webs of entanglement and connection with the local and regional, with the multiple dimensions of place, from watershed to time. She has been deeply formed by working with Bread and Puppet Theater, Great Small Works, All the Saints Theater, and other politically and socially-engaged puppet and parade organizations. She has learned from and gives thanks for the Aorta Collective, Peoples’ Institute for Survival and Beyond, White Awake, Baltimore Racial Justice Action and the many community-rooted, justice-oriented organizations, organizers and elders in Baltimore.
The Lantern Sisters
The Lantern Sisters (Katherine Fahey and Dan Van Allen) are based in Baltimore, Maryland. Folk art is not static; it shifts with the times, uncovering new meanings in old words, new ways of talking about the communal pathways that led us to where we are today. For artists Katherine Fahey and Dan Van Allen, Crankies are a way to interpret our uncertain times, to draw artistic inspiration and power from the sources of meaning in their lives. History, community, folk tales, ballads, live performance, and environmental instability all manifest in the sounds, feelings, and sensations that permeate their Crankies. Their work transports audiences to another time and place, with their authentic and personal interpretations of folk tales, oral histories, and songs of America and Canada.
Facebook: facebook.com/2hawks2fishes
Instagram: instagram.com/katherine_fahey
Patreon: patreon.com/katherinefahey
Location: The Patterson & Creativity Center
Location: The Patterson
Location: The Marquee Lounge
Location: The Patterson
