Handmade Puppet Dreams selected myself and 7 other puppetry artists to develop short puppet films in 2021 with a special micro-commission deployed during the pandemic. In addition to financial support from the Green Feather Foundation, HPD producers Alex Griffin, Jessica Simon and executive producer Heather Henson offered us film workshops and critique sessions on our works in progress. In January 2022 I’ll be writing here about the inspiration and techniques we used and learned.

Our film, Misophonia, had a public screening on the Handmade Puppet Dreams facebook page on December 18, 2021 with the 7 other films:

Above All | Dir. Sifiso Mabena, 5min

Being and Becoming | Dir. Charlotte Lily Gaspard, 7min

Doe and Yeti | Dir. Dan Luce, 8min

Handwritten | Dir. Jaime Sunwoo, 9min

Judy: Union Maid | Dir. The Boxcutter Collective, 10min

Misophonia | Dir. Linda Wingerter, 9min

Ramkali | Dir. Adnan Hussain, 11min

Story Retriever | Dir. Chamindika Wanduragala, 6min

We just made our fourth shadow film, Quilt of Stars, this time for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

To complement LACMA’s month of cozy quilts in February, I used shadow puppets and paper collage to tell a story of a family passing down the art of sewing through a quilt of clothing scraps, as a way of connecting and remembering. It’s my longest film yet at 13 minutes and I got lots of help, with original music by Travis Knapp accompanied by Annie Sumi, and production support from the tech wiz’s in the family, my mom Judy Wingerter, and my husband Evgeni. Lots of photos of the process are on my Instagram @pollysonic.

We also had financial support from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County’s Specific Opportunity Stipend.

There is at least one family quilt in my own family, and we all sew. But the teaching of quilting is a stand-in for the teaching of puppetry that passed from my grandfather to me. And so the film is dedicated to him, David A. Bogdan.

Quilt of Stars debuts on LACMA’s youTube channel on Sunday, February 14 at 12:30 PT / 3:30 ET as part of their Andell Family Sunday series. Find it through this link. More to come on a zoom artist talk right after the viewing.

Some stills from the film and a short trailer below.