An Eventful Weekend

The circus celebrated Labor Day with a weekend full of fun events and even a swimming trip to the local quarry.  A few days ago we put on a roadside Tiny Circus show in front of Elsewhere as part of Downtown Fridays in Greensboro.  Passers-by could watch all sorts of Tiny Circus histories, then come inside to help create our latest work in progress: The History of Dust.

Other Elsewherians took part in Downtown Fridays as well, making it a fun, high energy evening for everyone.

Resident artists challenged each other in super wheelie ball, an original game created by Ben Garthus.

Dust continued forming the next day, and was helped along by hands big and small at a free stop motion Playshop held at Elsewhere.  As you can see, we’re surrounded by books, and so its only natural that books play a big role in telling the History of Dust.  Using books as building blocks we are currently constructing a one-of-a-kind, book bound time machine!  As all the dust keeps piling up we look forward to sharing more updates with you soon.

Another One Blogs The Dust

Today a collection of Elsewherians brainstormed the The History of Dust. Sitting around the table in what is known as the Collaboratory, we talked about the ways and places dust gathers and what the existence or absence of dust could mean.

As we settled on dust, there were moments of levity.

And more serious contemplations. 

Trying to keep track of all of the little particles of ideas. 

The storyboarding begins!

Carlos, Jess, Johanna, and Laura talking through the animation. 

At this stage in the brainstorm we try to describe the story as visually as possible to make sure we’re imagining the animation in the same way. We were inspired (one might even say bound) by our surroundings.

Now we get our hands dirty. We’ll make the set and props for the animation with visitors to Elsewhere’s Open House on Friday. And on Saturday: we animate! If you're around, come play with us.

Tiny Circus goes Elsewhere...

After raising hell and high water Tiny Circus traveled through an earthquake and approaching hurricane to park our airstream in downtown Greensboro, NC for a month long residency at Elsewhere.

Elsewhere is an arts production site and museum set within a former thrift store housing a 58-year collection of colorful American surplus, thrift, and antiques. We’re excited to be part of the Elsewhere community of artists and to spend the next month playing in this amazing space!

During our first days at Elsewhere the Tiny Circus gave an artist talk and learned about other resident’s work. The next night we attended an outer-space themed community dinner for a fellow Elsewhere resident’s project Radio Espacio Estacion. 

Elsewhere’s incredible living museum provides a unique setting to create new histories as well as site-specific shorts with the Tiny Tiny Circus characters developed over the past summer. Stay tuned for lots of updates-its gonna be a fun month!

Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown

From Gatlinburg, the circus headed 1004 miles north to Provincetown, Massachusetts to teach another animation class. 

Our studio was in a renovated lumber-yard at the Fine Arts Work Center.  Class participants divided into groups to brainstorm short animations.

Storyboarding "Hell or High Water".

Animating a soggy marshmallow.

The finished animation, a beautiful little short.  Tiny Circus heads south next to Elsewhere, in Greensboro, NC. 

Arrowmont School of Art and Craft

 Tiny Circus traveled to Gatlinburg, TN, land of swimming holes and bears, to teach an animation class at the Arrowmont school.  Class participants began by illustrating an common idiom (a stitch in time saves nine) to learn various animating processes

Next, the class turned to a more familiar topic and began to created an animated bear trap.

 Here, animating a chair lift behind a scene of Gatlinburg. 

 Creating a cardboard bear trap, spray painted gold, of course. 

It was a great week with many trips to swim and some late-night animating with a corn-dog.  We'll be back soon.  Check our youtube page for the final version of the animation.

Characters

 

Our resident hedgehog has headed home to Kansas City - the circus is winding down for the summer.   

Over the last two weeks, we've been working on character development.  Six circus performers evolved from our 6-week brainstorm, each has a back-story and musical theme.  Each is the product of intense collaboration - and multiple generations of refinements. 

Our Wednesday night community meals - ducks, food, a film, and backyard community. 

 Here, Marty begins to take shape around her hand-machined armature. 

The circus collaborated to create musical themes for each of the characters as well.

The Tiny Attic Circus of Lincoln, Nebraska took Sheva the fire-breather and Maestra the ring leader home to do some design work - they sent wonderful creations back to Tiny Circus Base Camp for finishing touches. 

A happy circus at the Danish Maid bakery.  A regular stop both in the day-time, and often at 2 AM for fresh 'nuts. 

Our tiny tiny circus is becoming more and more plausible by the day! It took us a few trials, but we are finally getting the strong man to be animate-able after a couple skeletal surgeries...

We've also been spending some time figuring out the logistics of the set for the Archival Room. Hannah did a great job drawing out our ideas and figuring out how to construct lots of tiny boxes.

And we're getting closer and closer to creating our vision of the human cannonball. He's even got his own theme song in the works.

All in all, we're having a great time seeing things come together and come to life!