Volunteer Projects for Local Communities
Part of my artistic practice includes volunteering time and skill for the local community.
Haunted House Performances
Below are samples of work that I’ve produced for a New Jersey elementary school’s annual fall fundraiser - a family friendly Haunted House.
Haunted House - 2021
After COVID restrictions, local area schools opened up again with social distancing, which worked well with Halloween!
My team of elementary school students constructed a fortune telling booth with screens that resembled eyes. We projected the animation videos in the eye screens while the fortune teller read the cards for the audience.
This performance lasted 4 hours a night, two nights, with seven student volunteers. Students took turns sitting in the audience, preparing for a jump scare at the end of the fortune telling reading.
Haunted House - 2018
This year was a collaboration between a local elementary school and the Girl Scouts of America. The theme was a haunted pirate ship. The girls recited sections of a poem that told the story of the lost pirate crew. There is a section where the video cuts out and the girls were expected to jump-scare the audience with the last line of the poem.
The video was projected on a semi-transparent fabric hung from the ceiling. A fan was rippling the fabric to create a ghostly effect.
The performance had a new group every five minutes for four hours a night over two nights in October 2018.
To the left is the full video.
Below is footage of the video in performance.
Haunted House - 2017
This year’s theme was Haunted Hotel. The skit was to illustrate how the sentient items in the coat check were jealous of their masters dancing the night away at the annual Monster Mash ball. I created the video above, include the puppet coat check monster that scares the guests at the end of the video.
Haunted House - 2016
This was the first year collaborating with the elementary school. I was assigned the school’s library. The guests were given a tour of haunted items around the library while the video was being played. This video only includes the animated segments. No footage of the performance space is included.
Cranford Municipal Alliance
To the left - Samples of work that I’ve produced for a New Jersey organization that educates the public about the dangers of underage alcohol consumption. These short animations are for their Instagram feed. Their target audience is between 14 - 21.