![\"Shadows\"](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/SHADOWS-4-A-e1578578201955.jpg\")
<\/a><\/a><\/a>There are 23 hand-made shadow puppets on display in the exhibition, with lights projecting the shadows of each puppet on a wall. The delicately carved details of clothing, facial features and hair are evident in the shadows of the puppets, which are in motion as air flows throughout the exhibition, bringing them to life on the walls. Samples of the dried cowhide used to make the puppets are available for visitors to touch and feel, both in the supple form needed for cutting designs with a sharp blade and the hard, dried end product that is painted dressing the puppets in colorful costumes. A video demonstrates how the puppets are made and manipulated, with Rollins\u2019s note that, \u201cIf you can eat with chop sticks, you too can work a shadow puppet.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her curator\u2019s statement Rollins says she curated the exhibition as a way of answering the question she seeking to resolve in her ongoing research: can you preserve a shadow? She notes the historic connection between shadow puppetry and the Daoist practice of \u201cghost calling.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone began to use actual manipulation of shadows as the conduit between this world and the other world,\u201d Rollins says, adding that through her work with shadow puppeteers she gained an understanding of the significance and difference between a shadow puppet performance and a three-dimensional puppet show.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was (in China) in 2008 I saw my first countryside performance – it was at a wedding, and the next one was at a funeral. For funerals, shadows are the go-between, the ambassadors between this world and the beyond,\u201d
\nRollins says, while no one at a funeral directly asks for a peaceful transition between the two worlds, \u201ceverybody knows it. It\u2019s felt. That\u2019s part of the significance of Chinese Shadow Puppetry and a lot of what I think is lost when the context and live performance aspect is removed in preservation.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says the years she spent in apprenticeship with master puppeteers in small villages remains the best way to transfer the traditions of Chinese Shadow Puppetry into the future. This also would help to provide another key to continuing the art form, what she describes as \u201cpractitioner-led creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s the key to really keeping the form growing, evolving and relevant with the current society and culture,\u201d Rollins says. \u201cWe need to emphasize live performance as a method of preservation so that every time it\u2019s performed, it\u2019s being continued instead of taking pictures and audio and archiving it on video. Those things only capture part of what a live performance is. It\u2019s better to perform it live so people can see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rollins has also presented exhibitions, lectures and performances including at the Art Institute of Chicago, Montreal Botanical Gardens, Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Linden Center in Yunnan, China, and Rietveld Academie in the Netherlands. She has created the first comprehensive shadow puppetry site in English at www.chineseshadowpuppetry.com<\/a><\/p>\n In addition to the Chinese Shadow Puppets exhibition, The Ballard Institute also continues \u201cArmy Ants and their Guests: Works Inspired by the Carl and Marian Rettenmeyer Collection,\u201d which features an array of specially commissioned new works of ant creations by puppeteers from around the world. The exhibition was done in collaboration with the AntU project of UConn\u2019s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Connecticut Museum of Natural History. For more information about the Rettenmeyer Collection and AntU go to this UConn Today story<\/a>.<\/p>\n