Framed!

In the merry month of July I had the privilege of running another animation workshop with the St. John’s Int. Women’s Film Festival’s FRAMED Workshops and “For The Love of Learning”.  Over four days, this group of young adults practiced flip books, took turns at experiencing animating and flipping pages on light tables, watched some classic films, and then created a group film in stop-motion animation.

Our animation directors included:

Ryan Flynn
Erin Power Granter (best name EVER)
Lindsay Kennedy
Jason King
Chris Mullett
Holly Nelson

Workshop assistants: Stephen Dunn, Karyn Dwyer

Enjoy…

Fall Down Seven, Stand Up Eight

I’ve just come home from a visit to Kalamazoo and nobody at home believes me.  I may as well have said I was going to Timbuktu or Lake Titicaca.

Kalamazoo happens to be the home base of a new, innovative circus and Kalamazoo should be proud.

Allison Williams of the world renown Aerial Angels is writer and director of STAND UP EIGHT, a theatrical circus show that brings you closer to the performers and sometimes right up onto the stage, along side them.
After a great deal of development and investment Allison and the Angel’s co-Artistic Director Zay Weaver got one final and dramatic boost into production when they appeared on the CBC’s reality show, The Dragon’s Den.  They received a generous investment from W. Brett Wilson, Canada’s cutest blue-eyed zillionaire, with soft spot for entertainers.

(If you’ve seen CBC ads for either The Dragon’s Den or for CBC programming itself, chances are you’ve seen Allison and Zay.  They were by far the coolest looking entrepreneurs to appear on the show, eating fire and tumbling from silks, and having the most teeth grittingly tense discussions of any I’ve ever seen aired on that program, ending in a few tears and some accusations of arrogance.  The Aerial Angels, in my opinion have single-handedly provided the CBC with a season’s worth of promotional ads.)

I went to Kalamazoo with my video camera in tow, to film the process of this new show and its first few performances.
What does it take to start a theatrical circus show and get it rolling?
What sorts of people invest their talents and personal lives into it?
This documentary will introduce you to them.

Along with other creative projects working their way out, I hope to spend my summer piecing together a masterpiece that captures what I see developing down in Kalamazoo Michigan, and quickly spreading across the globe.

Art.  Passion.  Drive.  Skill.

…kittens.
…Lots and lots of kittens.

(It’ll make sense.)

As a peculiar little side note: My aspiration to break out into documentary (as I am primarily an animation filmmaker) was what originally brought me to the world of variety performance.  I had desired to make a film about the life of circus/sideshow/street performers many years ago.  Realizing I knew little about either documentary or the lives of variety performers, I dropped that story to experiment in actually performing as a comic fire eater for a while.  Allison Williams taught me how to light my tongue ablaze in the back alley of a street festival one summer in Toronto.
After a few years and some short edits of performance related video footage, I have now come full-circle with an inside scoop of the variety life and some documenting experience.  I couldn’t have worked it out better if I had tried. …and I did try.  Funny, that.

!NEW!
I’ve just finished the first promo video for Stand Up Eight Circus.
Filming and editing by Rachel Peters.
Second camera man, Dragon Alexander.

!ALSO!
Stand Up Eight in 90 Seconds! For the busy business person who just doesn’t have time for 4 and-a-half minutes.

Painting Prayers

While in the middle of painting my latest piece, “Faith”, I realized that my paintings are my prayers.  (With the exception of “Crayola”, which came out making no sense to me at all.)

Not figuratively, as artsy, sentimental mush.  They are very literally prayers.

That’s probably why I’m so emotionally attached to them (”Crayola” aside), and why I’ve never been able to consider selling them (apart from, “Crayola”… Poor “Crayola”).

This also might be why none of them ever feel finished.  Especially the paintings which remain unanswered.

When I look back on them I see that each one was created in a moment when I felt there was nothing else I could manage to do — when none of my own actions could change my life’s circumstances or my own condition and I had run out of words and ways to rephrase my pleas and petitions to God, I could still make pictures.  In a way, to me my paintings echo the tone of Old Testament offerings.

I’ve just finished reading “Disappointment with God” by Philip Yancey, and am now half way through his, “Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference?”.

The visual result of such a tumultuous theme over the last year of my life is this ~ “Faith”, a series of three, acrylic on canvas (photographed with a very poor camera).

It’s a request, not a claim.

I can’t hold on to my treasures.  They were gifts to begin with.  I’m not in control of them, and my attempts at grasping at the pile only results in bruised and squashed fruits.  So I only have one option.  It’s certainly not common sense and it seems awfully foolish to do, but it’s the only way out.  Chuck ‘em up to God.  It’s the only chance they’ve got, and the only way to free my arms of the load.  I guess my arms are of no use if they’re clinging on to tumbling fruits.
This image to me is the flip-side to the Pilgrim’s Progress idea.  He’ll take care of not only my burdens, but my treasures as well (before grasping on to my treasures becomes my burden).

I’m not yet sure which of the three images is me.

Other prayers:

“Precarious”

“Day: 1″ (which was painted over another painting called “Day: 39″)

Day: 1 represents the first moments of reflection and coming to terms - on the way to recovery and able to rest, but reflecting on how things will never again be quite as they were, before.  Blind faith hopes there will be a purpose, in spite of the thick fog that tries to convince it otherwise.  Day: 1 waits, hoping the pain will become a pearl.
Day: 39 was painted a few years earlier.  It was an image of an emaciated hermaphrodite character, doubled over and dry-heaving on the floor.
40 days in the desert.  40 days of flood waters rising.  The 39th day is that nearly broken state that thinks it will surely last forever and could never guess Day: 1 is just around the corner — the day before a dove returns with an olive branch in beak.  That painting was far too painful looking for me to ever display, so I felt it much more meaningful to start again, over top, with Day: 1.

“Anne’s Blue Heaven”
“I see the eight of us with our ‘Secret Annexe’ as if we were a little piece of blue heaven, surrounded by heavy black rain clouds. The round, clearly defined spot where we stand is still safe, but the clouds gather more closely about us and the circle which separates us from the approaching danger closes more and more tightly. Now we are so surrounded by danger and darkness that we bump against each other, as we search desperately for a means of escape. We all look down below, where people are fighting each other, we look above, where it is quiet and beautiful, and meanwhile we are cut off by the great dark mass, which will not let us go upwards, but which stands before us as an impenetrable wall; it tries to crush us, but cannot do so yet. I can only cry and implore: ‘Oh, if only the black circle could recede and open the way for us!’”
~Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank

“Ravine”

Newest in the “Painting Prayers” theme,
“Safe”

Get Lectured

Having missed my last lecture opportunity at Sheridan College due to a sudden and unexpected bout of what felt a lot like death, I’ll be trying it all again on April 6th, at 1pm.  To students — come get lectured about the “real world”!  There is some talk of possible fire eating, but chances are that administration won’t ever let me come back again if I do it.

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing films-in-progress during my recent “guest mentor” days, and I look forward to seeing the few dedicated ones who are still showing up to class in this last home stretch of 4th year!
You’re almost there!  Congratulations to you!

Living in the REAL World?

Monday, February 9th, Rachel Peters will be heading back to Sheridan College, where she once spent hours upon hours drawing bouncing balls, waving seaweeds and Vivien’s infamous Pink Panther, to lecture animation students on what life is like in the “real world”.  Funny thing, Rachel isn’t entirely sure she’s ever lived in the “real world”.  It’s all lollipops and gumdrops where she spends her time.
Perhaps hearing about Rachel’s unreal world will be a nice counter balance to what she remembers having heard so much in school, about how difficult the industry is (which is can be).
But with a few strategic moves, Rachel believes one can situate themselves so that lollipops an gumdrops don’t have to be just a pipe dream.  Enjoying your living and finding exciting opportunities is more attainable than one may assume.

Valenween’s is upon us.

Somewhere within the immeasurable moment that falls between February, Friday 13th and February 14th (Valentine’s day) lies a celebration Rachel has created called, “Valenween’s”. Valenween’s is a celebration for the unlucky in love. It occurs only every few years, and the next one won’t be upon us until the year 2015 (followed by 2026), so treasure Valentine’s Eve, known this year as “Valenweeeeeen’s”.

Who’s more unlucky in love than little Hot Water Bottle here? Apparently hairless guinea pigs only come in male. He’ll never find a lady who fully understands him, his jiggly, steaming hot belly or his disturbingly naked boy parts.  Poor little guy.  I wish I hadn’t had to give him away last spring.  It’s nothing but rejection for a hairless guinea pig.

Now, WHO Gave Rachel the Lighter?!

On Friday, February 13th, (That’s right, Friday the Thirteenth!) Rachel will be joining Zero Gravity Circus in freeze-your-bum-off Toronto to not only perform her comical fire eating, but also to screen her newest short, animated film, “Nagasaki Circus“.  It’s sure to be an eventful night.
As well as extinguishing fire with her FACE, Rachel will also be seen lighting her tongue on fire, her fingers, her lips, and if all goes well… nothing else.

Side note:  Somewhere within the immeasurable moment that falls between February, Friday 13th and February 14th (Valentine’s day) lies a celebration Rachel created called, “Valenween’s”.  Valenween’s is a celebration for the unlucky in love.  It occurs only every few years, and the next one won’t be upon us until the year 2015 (followed by 2026), so treasure Valentine’s Eve, known this year as “Valenween’s“.