Shawna Reiter, experimental artist and fine art puppeteer

[My November column in the Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser]

Puppets weave their way through the life of Ajax artist, Shawna Reiter. When she was a child, her dad would tuck her into bed and then act out a goodnight story with homemade hand puppets. The puppet magic of Jim Henson on Sesame Street and, especially in his films, Labyrinth and Dark Crystal, fascinated and inspired her. And puppets she created in high school became her art class graduation project. Although they took a back seat during her post secondary education, Reiter has since produced puppet shows as experimental theatre and fine art installations. And is presently working on several projects in which puppets play the leading roles.

Reiter began her post-secondary education in the one year Art and Design Foundation Studies
course at Centennial College so she could put together a portfolio to get into second year at the Ontario College of Art and Design. There she took an interdisciplinary approach, with primary concentration on sculpture and electronic mechanics. Soon after graduating, in 2004, she and a colleague landed a Canada Council grant and put together a show called Tantalus Synthesis, at the Station Gallery in Whitby with robotic puppets that interacted with onlookers by way of motion sensors.

In 2006, Shawna decided to pursue a Masters of Fine Art degree at U. of Calgary, graduating in 2009, with her thesis works being installation pieces consisting of hand-built interior spaces that the viewer could enter and engage their imagination with the use of puppets, video cameras and monitors. This past August, she was given the opportunity to take her puppetry vision to the Calgary streets in an RV during a residency gig with an experimental art collective called CAMPER. And she keeps in touch with Calgary-based Old Trout Puppet Workshop theatre group following involvement in a puppet theatre intensive with them in Banff.

At the present time, the busy Reiter is collaborating with a puppet theatre group based in Humber College, about to start teaching puppet-making at a high school in Brock under the auspices of the local ArtsSmarts Program and contemplating following up on an urge to teach art at the university fine arts level.

If you would like to get in touch with this fascinating artistic visionary, message her at shawna@puppetartist.ca