While portraits have traditionally represented a person at a specific moment in their lives, this workshop will introduce stop-motion as a technique for creating animated portraits that explore how their subjects change over time. Taking inspiration from the contemporary artist Hugo Crosthwaite’s stop-motion drawing animation A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chávez, included in the Kemper Art Museum’s exhibition The Outwin: American Portraiture Today, participants will use their own memories and experiences to create animated portraits that tell a person’s story through moving images. Led by artist, filmmaker, and community organizer Sarah Paulsen, participants will learn techniques of stop-motion animation using drawing and animation apps to create their own animated portraits. Participants will go home with video files of their animations and the skills to continue creating.

This workshop is free and open to teens in middle and high school. Registration is limited to 15 participants. Public transportation reimbursement is available for travel to and from the museum.

Registration for this program is closed.

About the facilitator

Raised in Kirkwood, Missouri, Sarah Paulsen is an artist, filmmaker, and community organizer whose artwork has been exhibited widely in local and national exhibitions, and whose prize-winning films have been featured in the St. Louis International Film Festival, the True/False Film Festival, the Black Maria Film Festival, the Motivate Film Festival, and the Chicago International Children's Film Festival, among many others. She was the recipient of the 2018 Great Rivers Biennial, which culminated in an exhibition at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. A 2010 CAT Institute fellow and 2015 Regional Arts Commission Artist Fellow, she has garnered numerous awards for her work and also completed several residencies, including the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. As a dedicated advocate for social change, Paulsen has made a key part of her practice the orchestration of large-scale community projects, such as participatory public murals, thematic round-table discussions, and the now-annual People’s Joy Parade on Cherokee Street, currently in its tenth year. Paulsen holds a BFA in visual art from the University of Missouri, Columbia and an MFA from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University. She lives and works in St. Louis, where she teaches art and animation at Marian Middle School and various colleges.