Brasstown – Leave it to an award-winning shadow puppeteer and paper-cutting artist to create a spooky and wondrous Halloween night show.
John C. Campbell Folk School hosted Katherine Fahey in their campus garden for a just-after-dark live show, “The Katherine Fahey & Dan Van Allen’s Halloween Crankie Show,” on Oct. 31. With the smell of fall leaves and smoke from a nearby fire pit filling the school’s pavilion, neighbors wandered in with a quiet energy.
A crankie is a box containing a scroll of images on paper or fabric. Fahey’s partner, Van Allen, was put in charge of hand-cranking the scroll and performing some puppet art from Fahey’s original creations.
The whole effect makes a lo-fi moving picture. Fahey stood to the side of the crankie box to tell the stories or sing a song. It’s an old art, originating in Europe in the late 18th century, but it has seen a resurgence.
“I think people are responding to technology,” she said. “They want to get back to folk art and craft. Storytelling is natural to us.”
Fahey championed the crankie movement by combining paper cutting, shadow puppetry, music and original storytelling.
“I was standing at the post office one day,” she said in her light, airy voice, “and began examining this tyvek envelope.”
Tyvek is a lightweight, waterproof material made from tightly spun polyethylene.
“I was tugging at the envelope and realized it would make the perfect medium for the scroll paper,” Fahey said. Her idea caught on, and it’s now the standard for crankie artists.
“It’s my innovation,” she said with a laugh.
She opened her show with an original story, “The Map Room,” which tells of her experience cleaning out her father’s home office after his death.
“He was a cartographer so his room was full of maps,” Fahey said, telling his story though the imagery of different kinds of birds. “It’s a tribute to my father.”
Among those spending their Halloween with Fahey was Mary Engel.
“I want to see the crankies,” she said. “I don’t know much about them, but it sounded fascinating.”
Engle wasn’t alone in her interest. Fahey draws a crowd wherever she tours. Known as Jane Appleseed, Fahey is considered a patron saint of crankies.
“Important stories get lost,” she said, “and they are valuable and meaningful to our communities.”
It’s this drive to create and retell stories that makes Fahey’s work so momentous.
“People who get to tell their stories are few and far between,” she said, just before opening her show. “I love sharing stories. It’s special for a visual artist to perform live.”