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Galleries Closed for Exhibition Installation, November 2-13

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From November 2-13, 2015, Ballard Institute staff will be deinstalling our current exhibition “The Work That Follows: 50 Years of UConn Puppeteers” and installing our new exhibition “From Thought to Image: 30 Years of Sandglass Theater.”  While the main galleries at the Ballard Institute will be closed during this process, the museum will remain open during normal business hours, and our exhibit titled “The World of Puppetry: From the Collections of the Ballard Institute” will be on display in the lobby.

We  invite you to join us for the grand opening of From Thought to Image: 30 Years of Sandglass Theater on Saturday, November 14 at 4:30 p.m. at the Ballard Institute. The opening events will include two performances of Isidor’s Cheek by Ines Zeller Bass of Sandglass Theater, at 1 and 3 p.m. in the Ballard Institute Theater.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Ballard Celebrates 150 years of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

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This past Saturday and Sunday, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry offered fall community puppet-building workshops with acclaimed Boston puppeteer Sara Peattie.

This year’s free workshops held at the Ballard Institute workshop space celebrate the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Participants brought the colorful and fantastic figures that popular Carroll’s fanciful world to life, rendering the White Rabbit, the Red Queen, the Cheshire Cat, the March Hare, and the eponymous Alice into puppet form.

Workshop participants are invited to parade with their puppets as part of the Celebrate Mansfield Parade that will be held on Sunday, September 20 at noon (Line-up begins at 11am at Farrell Field near the Post Office). The parade is part of the 12th Annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival.

Sara Peattie’s dramatic puppet creations have been featured at community parades and pageants across the United States. Long a mainstay of Boston First Night festivities and the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in New York City, Sara Peattie’s work—through her Boston-based Puppeteers Cooperative company and Puppet Free Library—combines community participation, simple, cheap, and practical puppet-building techniques, and a brilliant design sense that allows community members of all ages to take part in the age-old pleasures of participatory puppet performance in public spaces. Sara recently designed and directed the community puppet parade and pageant in Storrs Center as part of the 2015 Puppeteers of America National Puppetry Festival.

For information on the 12th Annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival, visit http://www.downtownstorrsfestival.org

Brian and Wendy Froud on Faeries, October 9 at 6 p.m.

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ortraits, drawings, studies and tales of those mysterious creatures, fairies, fill the pages of Brian Froud’s Faeries’ Tales by Brian and Wendy Froud. We meet individual fairies and learn their stories. Following their popular book Trolls, Faeries’ brings readers into the depths of the mysterious and enchanting realm of these intriguing beings. Brian Froud, a renowned British artist, has created some of the most respected and highly acknowledged mythic artwork of our time. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Original Artwork. Wendy Froud is an American (born in Detroit) who is a doll artist, sculptor, and puppet-maker, best known for her work creating creatures for the Jim Henson films The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, as well as her work on the Star Wars series, for which she was the fabricator of Yoda. The Frouds live in Devon, England. Bart Roccoberton, the Director of the Puppet Arts Program at UConn writes, “Brian and Wendy Froud have inspired the Puppet Arts, internationally, since the mid-1970s with their imaginations and creativity.”

Please call 860-486-8525 to reserve a seat.

RECEPTION at 5:30 p.m.

TALK: 6:00 p.m.

BOOKSIGNING immediately following