Pencil crayons and glitter glue. Lyrical words and orchestral music. Construction papers and safety scissors. Acrylic paints and stained fingers. Each artistic medium poses physical constraints, and possesses endless potential. In this space between liberation and limitation, an artist must view the materials before them not simply as rules or constraints, but as the starting point on a map, and all the infinite paths they can explore.
For participants of the Lost Story Project, as organized by Ottawa Children’s Storytelling Festival, the starting point is simple and specific. This year, from March 22nd to April 18th, children storytellers are invited to record narration to accompany a three-minute animation (created by Tina Le Moine) and to create a story.
The animation, as inspired by the art of Heather Bale, showcases various woodland creatures adventuring through scenes both natural and fantastical. Each shot, animated through stop motion, features various compositions of stylistically bright paper cut-outs. Though the scrapbook-like patterns featured in this video are not realistic visuals, they do give rise to a sense of whimsy and wonder that feels emotionally true. The construction paper figures and set pieces, each cut out separately before joining together to create a greater whole, speaks to the creative process of constructing a story. Each part of each scene — the animals, the waves in the waters, the stars in the night sky, the ribbon of colours on those magical eggs — are joined, layered, and slotted together in a matter that requires both deliberation and happenstance.
Just as Le Moine stitched each visual element together to create the animated tapestry, so too, must the storytellers of the Lost Story Project weave an audio component into the narrative.
Each participant is given the same visual materials to work with, but through this merger of image and sound, each can interpret the same scenes in unique ways to produce unique ends. After all, it only takes an ominous word, and some orchestral music, to turn a tranquil night under the stars into a foreboding terror. In this process of deriving meanings out of pictures and putting them into words, these storytellers are not only engaged in the deliberate craft of storytelling, but also the improvised art of discovery. Like toddlers exploring the physical worlds in their first steps, when artists first create stories, they slowly grow the capabilities of their creativity and tentatively test the boundaries of their imagination. Piece by piece, line by line, word by word, the figures takes shape, the cut-out is freed from the paper, the map is filled in with all the bright colours — and, thusly, the lost story is found.