Andrew Young (he/they) is a Taiwanese-Indonesian-American puppeteer, artist, and educator based in Minneapolis. They received their puppeteer training through Monkeybear’s Harmolodic workshop, a Black, Native, and POC focused puppetry organization, and has since worked for Mayday and Barebones as a staff artist/performer, as well as continued to create their own work. They have also been a guest artist for Parade the Circle in Cleveland, OH, and at the Madeline Island Independence Day Parade.
As a part of their work Andrew is interested in collaboration and community building, healing trauma through art, exploring the natural world, and aiming light towards mental health and our inner worlds. As a teacher Andrew has a focus on empathy and mindfulness in learning, respect for gender/sexual/racial diversity, and encouraging students to trust their inner creative voices.
More About the Artist
They received their BA in Studio Art from the University of Minnesota, and have taken workshops from Clive King, Daniel Tomasini and Beatriz Tobe, Agnes Cecile, Thi Bui, Ulrike Mohr, Paul Linden, and done a natural building course at the Visitor’s Center Art Camp in the Upper Peninsula.
Andrew believes that art can be incredibly healing. It can help us understand ourselves better, it connects us to others, and can be a powerful tool for seeing the world differently. Andrew’s background is in visual arts, but their main medium the past several years has been in puppetry. They feel that puppetry is an often-overlooked art form, but one that holds so many possibilities, as well as a rich global history.
What Andrew loves about puppetry is that you can do anything. Puppets can be anything from whimsical, to serious, to abstract, to incredibly honest. In addition, there are so many different forms of puppetry–shadow, bunraku, hand, marionette, object, and rod, and in addition to that they can be combined if you want. Puppets can do what actors cannot, and there is magic that happens in the worlds that puppetry creates.
Program Offerings
Residencies
Bringing Things To Life: An Introduction to Puppetry
Teaches the basics of puppetry styles, building, and movement–Shadow (overhead projector or direct screen), rod puppets, marionettes, multi-person puppets, and object puppetry. Could cover multiple styles or focus in on just one style.
Through the course of the residency students would learn to conceive a show, construct basic puppets for it, and put on a performance using what they’ve learned.
Everyone Needs an Elephant for a Friend: Introduction to Building Giant Puppets
Using a combination of salvaged materials, foraged natural materials, and lightweight construction materials, students will work together to design and build a large-scale puppet that they will be able to puppet together. Great for creating a puppet for an event or for eventual display.
Workshops
Anyone Can Draw: Basic Drawing and Painting Skills
This workshop will teach students the basics of drawing, exploring different ways of mark-making, various tools (pencil, pen, ink, marker), and some light art history showing different styles. The basics of shading, perspective, proportion, and edges will be covered, as well as different types of drawing subjects such as landscape, still-life, and figure, as well as drawing from the imagination. We will also explore painting, using watercolors and acrylics to expand into colors building off of the basic drawing skills.
