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RARE and friends at the Raggedy Ann Rally Marketplace - Arcola, IL, 2024

The Raggedy Ann Revival Effort (or R.A.R.E. for short) has been my main passion project since March 2021. Raggedy Ann, aka Rag Dolly, is a musical by Joe Raposo and William Gibson. Concieved as a dark fairy tale to show children the importance of hope and friendship when faced with death and adversity, its rocky production led to a hasty push to Broadway, and the tonaly mismatched show failed as a result. Our goal is to revise the script and secure the licensing directly from the estates, in order to bring back the show for schools and community theaters to produce.

The Raggedy Ann Revival Effort presents Rag Dolly: The Raggedy Ann Musical - a Staged Reading coming in February 2025 to the Putnam Playspace at Ohio University. Come give us your feedback, hear the songs we’ve all come to love (performed alongside a live piano accompanist), and join us to celebrate four years of not taking “impossible” for an answer!

As an organizer of the group, I help manage archives, create posts for our social medias, and arrange community event. I also assist in working on the revised script of the show, and often do in-depth research into the playwright's process and previous works to keep our changes as faithfull as possible.

If you're interested in learning more about the musical, our group, and how to support us, visit the official website:

The Fogtown series is a live-action puppet series (so, no, not stop-motion) started by Sean Parker and Austin Hillebrecht! Currently in the development and pitching stage, the show re-imagines the adventures of Sherlock (in this case, Sherblock Holmes) and his friend Watson (Blockson). They're also working on a choose-your-own-adventure game using the same puppetry techniques! The team is a close-knit group of writers, artists, puppet makers and film people, and I'm honored to be part of their volunteer crew making puppets, costumes, and puppeteering on set.

Projects I've done as part of the Fogtown production:

In STEM there is a concept called the "black box", a system with an input and an output, but not clear process in between. The Maker community's goal is to eliminate the black box, and create a more supportive and accesible environment where new artists and craftspeople can learn and share processes, as well as remove the separation from the origins and work that goes into everyday objects around us. So while I respect certain protected ideas that preserve the integrity of a work, especially if one needs to make a living off of it, I encourage the sharing of the process. Assuming the process itself of making is worth trademarking assumes that our own experiences have nothing to bring to the table, that given the same materials and the same technical background every human would make the same art. And I simply don't believe that.

I love photographing and documenting every step of a project, and believe sharing my process to be an important part of my place in the artistic community. If you feel inspired by something you see, I'm pleased by the thought that I could ease some of the frustration involved with doing something for the first time.

(That being said, if I'm working on a project for someone else, I don't post anything until it has been made public or I get approval. And, when asked, I will refrain from posting any work-in-progress shots at all.)

But that's also why I'm happy to share my experience with building this website itself! Because it is just as much of a creative endeavor as my costume or puppetry work.

The Coding Journey

I built this place myself! I was frustrated at the lack of options for most portfolio website builders, so I decided to teach myself some html and start from scratch. Currently I am hosting this on Neocities, as it's very user-friendly! Once I have finished everything, I'll consider moving to a more secure host.

If you want to read my real-time process and notes, you can check out the devlog below:

You'll notice in the devlog that it starts with "began overhauling the site". I started coding my own site for the first time in Feburary of 2023, the first time I had ever worked with html, and it was quite a mess for a while. I set it aside and created a personal site where I could experiment and learn, and somehow ended up messing up the design code for this one in the process. After a few more months of putting it aside, I finally felt like I knew enough to revisit it! In September 2023 I picked out a new template and dug in. And I'm very glad I did.

The Web Revival

I'm a real proponent of returning to the "old web", of handmade sites and unique blogs. Generally, the world of social media has replaced these in the social aspect more than it has replaced professional websites like this, but the aesthetic is still lost when everything is made from drag and drop widgets and clean minimalist squares. Learning html from scratch has been a real treat, I would reccomend it to anyone who has thoughts they want to put out into the world. Once you've learned even the basics, it's hard to go back to those white and grey squares and bare bones customization. There is such an opportunity for creativity out there.

I firmly believe that if we're going to lessen our dependence on social media, the only way is to provide people with an acessible alternative and make it genuinely exciting. They don't have to be clean and polished and proffesional, just functional and personal and important to their creator.

A wonderful recource for why and how to start your own site is 32-Bit Cafe.

88x31 Buttons

Without an all-powerful algorithm digging up other people's pages, on the revived web - we use site buttons! The standard size is either 88x31 or 32x32 pixels, with the standardized dimensions allowing many buttons to fit neatly next to each other. On my site, these are all links to artists, friends, and collaborators, mostly in my local area. There's many benifits to this, I get to support my friends, they get a little more visibility (and this is often mutual), and you get a curated web surfing experience knowing you're following my recommendations! If we're going to build a community outside of social media, we have to bring back ways of supporting each other and forming those connections.

If you'd like to be on my button wall, shoot me an email! Don't have a button? Use this button maker, or I'll happily make one for you!

My button:

Credits

• Headshot photos by Temperate Sage Photography
• Website template: ©repth
• Tile & carpet backgrounds from Texture Town
• Fabric backgrounds from Architextures
• Text box textures are grey jean, classy fabric, and cloth alike from Transparent Textures
• Header font is Nougat by Dieter Steffmann
• Rug fringe asset from The Fringe Factory
• Cursor by Biker via RealWorld Graphics

Resources

• Multiple image resizer
• Hex code from image
• Adding texture to fonts
• 32-Bit Cafe

At the beginning of 2024, I decided on a project: I would see as many small and experimental shows as possible for the year, and I would find something to say about all of them. No more just talking about the 4-5 shows I'm obsessed with, I want to expand my experience and challenge myself to form coherent opinions!

In addition, I've been watching to get to know the local theater community more, to make friends and build connections, and support the very industry I want to be a part of.

These aren't hard reviews of the shows, just some personal opinions and stuff I liked! I know that there's a good change people who worked on them will find themselves reading these, so I just want to keep it pretty lighthearted.

To read my blog about the shows I've seen recently, click the button below: