Springfield artist revives 18th century form of moving pictures with show featuring ‘crankies'

Long before the eye-popping IMAX experience, 95-inch screen TVs, streaming videos on iPhones, and even before the old-time “talkies,” there were “crankies.” Springfield artist Sandi Green-Baker is spellbound by this 18th century form of visual storytelling, and she's sharing it with the Ozarks in hopes it will catch on.

Just in time for the spooky season, audiences will get a chance to watch one unspool — literally — and hear the mournful ballad of a ghostly haunting, “Lady Margaret,” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 17, in the Library Center auditorium.

It’s easier to watch a crankie — the modern-day term — than build one.

The artist starts with a long scroll of paper, velum or other flexible material and illustrates, paints or embellishes it to tell a story.

The ends of the scroll are wound onto two spools. The spools are loaded into a box with a “window” opening (picture an old-style TV cabinet without the screen and innards.) A hand crank is affixed on top of the cabinet, on either side. One person slowly hand cranks the scroll to reveal the illustrated story as another person narrates or sings a song or performs music.

That was entertainment in the late 18th century when these “moving panoramas” first appeared in Europe and in the 19th century in America.

Green-Baker says she’s thrilled that crankies are experiencing a resurgence in Europe and on the East and West coasts, home of crankie festivals and workshops. There are even crankie celebs like Sue Truman, who shares crankie stories and videos on her website, The Crankie Factory. The Seattle-based Truman describes herself as a fiddler, guitarist and crankie artist, all three of which can be useful in the old storytelling art form.

Crankies can be minimal — a scrolling, illustrated story like those of the past — or they can be ornately decorated, or involve musical accompaniment. Green-Baker’s “Cold Rain” crankie combines the driving folk-rock song of the same title with a colorful moving panorama that illustrates her interpretation of the song. She created the entire scroll with hand-cut vinyl images that resemble wood block prints.

The cabinets can be as small as a matchbox or the size of a refrigerator like the one custom built for “Cold Rain.” Some crankie artists go all out with light shows, overhead projectors and marionettes — “the big guns” — in Green-Baker’s world. “Lady Margaret” doesn’t get any more high-tech than the electricity for two flickering light bulbs behind the scroll to create dancing candlelight and a sense of doom.

“Being an artist all my life,” Green-Baker says, “I’ve experimented with lots of different media and I like all of it but … I knew that there was something out there that was going to be a combination of all the things that I truly love — illustration, storytelling, theater, folk music and puppetry.”

‘Lady Margaret' becomes a crankie

The “Lady Margaret” crankie was inspired by the soundtrack for the movie “Cold Mountain.” The haunting, 1600s ghost story of a heartsick maiden whose rival marries her lover stoked Green-Baker’s imagination.

With the sorrowful tune in her head, her vision for the story took earthly shape. She illustrated scenes on a scroll of velum and added touches from research. The dramatic font for lettering came from gravestone rubbings she took in a North Carolina cemetery. Her illustrations echo headstone symbolism: A weeping willow — for the circle of life. A broken column to represent a life cut too short. She also foreshadowed the maiden’s fate with a rope adorning the archway of her chamber. “Some of the things just all fell together…” Green-Baker says. “Like it had a mind of its own…”

As the crankie operator grasps the crank handles to begin the story, room lights are dimmed so the flickering bulbs behind the cabinet cast shadows through the scrolling velum. A man sings the old ballad:

“Lady Margaret was standing in her own room

A comb in her long, yellow hair

When who did she spy but sweet William and his bride

As to the church yard they drew near…”

It’s not the IMAX

With 3D thrillers and e-entertainment in the palm of our hands, what’s the appeal of old-world storytelling for today’s audiences?

“I would say it’s the lack of technology,” Green-Baker says. No 72-foot-wide screen. No chest-throbbing special effects. “It makes me think about, like in the old days, when people would gather around their radio and they were just so in tune to what was coming over the wire.”

One gentleman at her “Lady Margaret” crankie presentation last year captured the effect it had on him. “He said he felt like he was in a foreign country, as if he were in France in some sort of intimate movie house.”

Lighting a crankie fire

Green-Baker, a former school art teacher, was drawn in about seven years ago when her artist daughter Re Baker Dietz made a handheld crankie. Online research led Green-Baker to crankie artists who combine visual art with folk singing — another of her passions — “and I was mesmerized.” She ultimately attended a week-long crankie workshop in North Carolina, which led to “Lady Margaret.”

That first crankie took 1 ½ years and 125 feet of velum to illustrate and embellish. There was finding the right cabinet and the right scroll material, the illustrations and her handmade “special effects” — hand puppets.

Hers are delicate, cardboard cutouts suspended from a wire and a dowel stem. They appear as silhouettes as they’re lowered through the top of the cabinet and into view to animate scenes.

The sum of that work resulted in a crankie that runs all of five minutes.

She worked for two years on the “Cold Rain” crankie, playing the song over and over to get the story scroll-to-music timing right, and hand cut each illustration for the 1,000-foot-long scroll of inkjet paper. Start to finish, that one’s over in five minutes.

“I can’t think about it that way,” she says, laughing. “If I did, I don’t think I would do another one.” Truth be told, she says, that’s her method with art. “I’ve always enjoyed the process of knocking the stuffing out of something.”

The only thing easy about her crankies is the inspiration, which Green-Baker draws from music. “I have a notebook that maybe has a list of like 150 songs I want to do,” she says. “So I’m going to have to live to 500, or I will have to get a lot faster.”

“Cold Rain” is a favorite song by the group Sad Daddy. When band members saw “Lady Margaret,” they commissioned Green-Baker to tell the story of the song in a crankie. Earlier this month, Sad Daddy performed “Cold Rain” live as the crankie played at Green-Baker and husband David Baker’s music venue, The Shoe Tree Listening Room.

Taking crankies to the Midwest

With two crankies under her belt, Green-Baker has a new goal.

“I’m going to put out a call to people who are interested in becoming one of my apprentices,” she said. Then she wants to build a dozen more crankies, conduct a workshop, and top it off with a good old Midwest Crankie Festival.

“I’m going to give myself a year,” she vows. “There’s one in Baltimore, Seattle, Toronto, but there’s not one in the Midwest. So that’s my goal, to make it happen.”