The Puppet Master: Covenant College art student specializes in giant puppets

Senior art major Will Lutz in front of his unfinished
senior project

It isn’t what you’d think of as a real art show.  Alongside the regular paintings, photos, sculptures, and other trophies of four years’ hard work at Covenant College’s Senior Art Exhibit on April 20, there will be a giant, romping rhino puppet.  And a dubstep party.

Senior art major Will Lutz, the puppet master, said “I think it was always in the back of my mind that I would make puppets for my [final project].”

A group of Covenant students
(from left: Hannah Irwin, Adrienne Belz,
Timothy Daugaard, and Austin Doctor)
help Lutz in the second phase of his project: sewing.

Before graduation, all Covenant seniors complete a Senior Integration Project or Paper (SIP).  For Lutz, a summer internship and a childhood hobby came together to create the idea for his SIP.

“I used to make puppets for my yard at Halloween.  My next-door neighbor was a crazy pumpkin carver and people would come from all over to see.  I guess I just wanted our yard to have something cool, too.”

The summer after his junior year Lutz landed an internship with the Harrison Center for the Arts, a community-based organization in Indianapolis, Ind.  According to its website, the Center seeks to be “a model for community arts, education, and urban revitalization programs across America.” 

Joanna Taft, executive director of the Center, said that Lutz came to her with the idea of giant animal puppets to advertize the Center’s art productions.  Lutz set up his completed puppets in downtown Indianapolis. 

The project in process: unfinished rhino head

“People would see the puppets and be like ‘What is this giant cat here for?’” said Lutz. “Then they learned about the art show.”

When Lutz presented the idea for his 15-foot-long rhinoceros puppet project to Professor of Art Kayb Carpenter, she approved, saying the rhino was “a very sculptural concept.”

Lutz estimates that he spent 16 hours per week on the rhino. The payoff: Jamazon, a dub-step party specifically planned for the rhino’s debut. Jamazon will be held on April 20, in conjunction with the senior art exhibit.

Will Lutz Interview by hvanbiber






Puppet Stages, posted with vodpod

Learn More:

-The Harrison Center for the Arts
-Harrison Center Photostream
-Covenant College Art Program

Video Reporting and the Five Shot Rule

Today I'm learning the basic-basic-basics (that's like the basics before the basics) of video reporting.

I have a convergence assignment from WJI which includes: the story (in 300 words), photos taken while reporting, a slideshow with photos and audio, an audio interview, a video, and supplementary links. Pretty basic probably but pretty damn overwhelming when you first look at it and think "Last time I used a camera was in Jamaica for a mission trip." And yet I'm finding it vastly more stimulating and rewarding than working on my SIP would be right now. (It's okay, GPA, we had a good run.)

So in the past ten minutes I've been learning the Five Shot Rule (that's a link to a really good video but don't watch it yet because then what I say will be boring and redundant).

1st shot: Get a close-up on the hands. You want to show us what your subject is doing: writing? tattooing? making cool pottery like Demi Moore?  Ooh, show me!

2nd shot: Your subject's face.  Let's see 'em talking.

3rd shot: Wide. Show me the place. (Also a good idea, particularly for stills and slideshows: Start the whole video with a wide shot - like, skyline wide. Narrow in to your specific building/street/area, then narrow again to the actual subject.)

4th shot: Over the shoulder of the person in question onto the action in question. Similar to the hands shot probably, but wider and from a different angle.

5th shot: uhhh, something like "Just get a different angle and for G--'s sake make it interesting."

Time to try this stuff out on Will Lutz's rhino.

Mommy, I want to be a journalist one day!

So I'm not a journalist. I'm a full-time college student and most of what I write is more of the old "according to This Fantastically Smart But Utterly Out of Touch Critic" than anything that's actually relevant to life in the 21st century. (But I will always love you Stephen Greenblatt.)

People at my school think I'm a journalist because I edit the school paper and sometimes write the really big news stories that we don't trust anyone else to cover. Whoop-de-doo. The last thing I wrote about was Niel Nielson's resignation as Covenant's president. A breaking story for sure, but not when published a week after it actually broke in an email. Oh, and I used the word "calling." Put that in my resume.

But I would really like to be a journalist. In all my twenty-two-year-old breathless fervor, "journalism" is "what I want to do when I graduate [in two weeks]." (Maybe because there's just nothing else? Or maybe because part of me still thinks it's super sexy. Then I remember I'm not Anderson Cooper.)

For better or worse, this blog is my partner in crime, my travel tool, my blank space of sand in which I trace the meandering successes and failures of my expedition into multimedia journalism.