RSVP in advance for this event!
Facing West Shadows(Free) ShadowLight residency at Red Poppy Art House
Free Live shadow play by Lydia Greer’s performance of Facing West Shadows: The Endless End
Join us for our monthly ShadowLight program at Red Poppy Art House with Lydia Greer’s performance of Facing West Shadows: The Endless End!
Lydia Greer will demonstrate a short segment of the extended cinema performance version of Facing West Shadows: The Endless End, demonstrating shadow and mirror puppetry (phantasmagoria) and guiding audiences to create their own shadow puppets inspired by the local Bay Area natural world.
Appropriate for children and families. Puppet-making supplies and instruction will be provided by ShadowLight.
This program is part of ShadowLight artists in residence at Red Poppy Art House. It is a Free Monthly program with hands-on workshop activities for families on the fourth Sunday of each month.
Featuring Artists:
Lydia Greer of Facing West Shadows
Sunday, April 28th, 2024
Time: 6:00pm – 7:30pm
Admission: FREE and Donation
This event is appropriate for both children and adults.
Admission is on a first-come, first-served basis.
This event is free to the public.
Due to limited capacity, RSVP is strongly recommended.
ABOUT FACING WEST SHADOWS:
Facing West Shadows: The Endless End is a cinematic, sculptural installation also performed as extended cinema that illuminates the perpetuation of extinction and survival; the disrupted life cycles of native plants and animals, aquatic systems, and fire ecologies as affected by anthropogenic climate change. The viewer’s attention is guided through projected moving images, hand-made animation, and cast shadows with a multi-dimensional soundscape. Collapsing and expanding time, species will live and die over the span of an hour of looping overlapping, multichannel, and multidirectional projection. In a sculptural environment, our role as animals within a system and as the planet’s apex predator is illuminated.
As in proto-cinematic cave paintings and ancient shadow theatre storytelling traditions, Facing West Shadows seeks to understand non-human species and our relationships with them. Among their inspirations are the Bay Area’s own precarious and diverse ecologies and Eadweard Muybridge’s electro-photographic investigation of consecutive phases of animal movements. By weaving multiple moving images of Bay Area ecologies, mycorrhizal networks, fire, and water, Facing West Shadows: The Endless End takes the viewer on a time-based and immersive journey through cycles of ecological and species extinction and sometimes, survival.
Facing West Shadows principal members: Lydia Greer (artistic director) and Caryl Kientz (theatrical director) in collaboration with artist Ya Wen Chien is a collective of artists, puppeteers, filmmakers, and musicians hybridizing art forms to create magical acts of rebellion as experimental art that is sustainable in the current gold rush climate of the Bay Area.
Facing West Shadows combines analog shadow theatre with original animation, video projection of found footage, and sometimes Opera performed live. Expanding into film, theatre, and installation, Facing West Shadows depicts stories re-imagined with unique visual storytelling to create surprising experiences for the audience by seamlessly combining old and new technologies and art forms.
For more information, visit the project website https://www.facingwestshadows.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CCGu1LZhFrE/
ABOUT THE FEATURED ARTIST:
Lydia Greer is a widely exhibiting interdisciplinary visual artist, filmmaker, animator, and the artistic director of Facing West Shadows, a Lumia arts collective working with shadow casting/ hybridizing art forms to create magical acts of rebellion as experimental art in the gold rush climate of the San Francisco Bay Area. Expanding into film/animation, theater/opera, puppetry, and sculptural installation, Facing West Shadows creates surprising experiences for the audience by seamlessly combining old and new technologies and art forms. Her layered, mixed media work includes sculptural and video installation, hand-made stop motion animation, single and multiple channel video, puppet theater, and works with paper.
ABOUT THE WORKSHOP:
Red Poppy Art House has partnered up with ShadowLight Productions for free monthly programs by ShadowLight artists for children and families. With instruction and guidance by ShadowLight teaching artists, attendees will be given the opportunity to make a shadow puppet, learn performance techniques, and use our screen and lights to perform their own short plays. This event is appropriate for children ages 3 to 12.
This FREE event creates an opportunity for youth in our neighborhood (Mission), who may otherwise not be able to attend such an event for lack of funds, to have access to art education with high-caliber teaching artists. By providing an opportunity to watch, interact, and play, we are encouraging participation and engagement with a vital storytelling art form. Storytelling is an important skill; it helps us to understand ourselves and one another, encouraging empathy.