All Posts

Thanks to those who braved the heat, stay hydrated this summer!

Interested in crankies, the history, how to make them? Join us for our first community club meeting this June 28th at the downtown public library from 2 to 3:30pm in Meeting Room 2A. Hope to see you there! 303 E. Kirkwood Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47408

Come help create a community drawn crankie scroll June 10 th this upcoming Wednesday 4:30 to 8 pm. This will be the first Family Night Out event of the summer, it will continue through every 2 nd Wednesday. More info: https://bloomington.in.gov/inroads/events/view?id=7252#:~:text=Family%20Night%20Out%20is%20a,and%20open%2Dair%20gathering%20space. "Family Night Out is a monthly block party designed for easy, low-pressure community connection right in the heart of downtown. On

Thanks for drawing! Here's videos of the completed scroll from the veiwing box of the crankie and inside. Check out these links for more info: https://www.bfasupply.com/ https://thefar.org/pictura-gallery/exhibits

We will be doing a community drawn crankie scroll craft activity at Bloomington Fine Art Supply as a part of the Block Party and Gallery walk this upcoming Friday, June 5 th from 5 to 9 pm . Hope to see you there!

Missed out on the in person event? Community Access Television Services at the MCPL recorded some of the performances from the first crankie festival in Bloomington. For recordings of each performace up close check out each performers personal social media. Check out the link below to watch this year's fest. Or watch right here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCGwRTsZurU&t=863s

Had lots of fun with the Far Woods matchbox crankie workshop. Each person got to make 3 matchbox crankies. Got to meet some cool people and see some great art! Here's our matchbox crankies: The Far Woods: https://www.thefarwoods.com/

And thank you to the talented artists for sharing their work. Be sure to check them out on instagram - Sam Bartlett @realsambartlett , Joel Klepac @ joelklepac , Harmony School @harmonyschoolbloomington , Soulcraft Bloomington @soulcraftbloomington, Elizabeth Blackwell @_blackwell_art , Laura Gonzalez @hierros_journey . Stay Crankie! The community scroll from this year's fest will be saved to show at next years We're Crankie: Crankie Festival!

Thanks so much to all the students at Harmony who added to this scroll. And repurposing a past project, a paper mache Rhino into a crankie box. This was made when We're Crankie was a part of Harmony's Art Month 2026. This crankie was also shown at this year's We're Crankie: Crankie Fest! Harmony School: https://harmonyschool.org/

Final show line up! Reminder that RSVP Tickets are not required to attend. It is just so we can try to get an estimate of how many people will attend. This is a free event and you can just come on by. Hope to see you tomorrow, stay crankie!

This year's festival will show the talents of Sam Bartlett, Joel Klepac, Soulcraft Bloomington, Harmony School, Elizabeth Blackwell, Bloomington Fine Art Supply and Laura Gonzalez with their crankies. Hope to see you there April 18th from 1 to 3pm at the downtown public library auditorium! Stay crankie! order for show: Sam Bartlett with B-A-N-J-O Joel Klepac with The North Wind Doth Blow Soulcraft Bloomington with The Dog and the Fox (made by mostly kids) Harmony School wit

This year's festival will feature the work of We're Crankie's creator Elizabeth Blackwell, with their crankie Adventures in Space. Besides crankies, she is an interactive sculpture artist with a focus on wood toys, exploring processing grief. The Adventures in Space crankie illustrates finding your way through an eat or be eaten world. The main characters are Ozzie, a blue alien, and Unit 257, his robot cat companion. This world of characters comes from her current draft of h

This year's crankie fest will feature work by Laura Gonzalez with their crankie about iron pours. Laura Gonzalez is a metal artist currently working as the Program Manager for Sculpture Trails Outdoor Museum. Previously the museum’s 2024-2025 Artist-in-Residence (AiR), she now focuses on giving presentations to K-12 schools, local organizations, and helping organize traveling foundry events and sculpture Tour n’ Pours. In her personal art practice, she focuses on exploring he

This year's crankie fest will feature work by Harmony School students with their crankie 50th Anniversary. This community scroll was drawn by students during Harmony's Art Month 2026 with We're Crankie. Inside a paper mache Rhino crankie, the first of its kind! https://harmonyschool.org/

This year's festival will feature work by Soulcraft Bloomington with their crankies, The Life of a Lotus Nut (made by adults only) and The Dog and the Fox (made by mostly kids) Soulcraft Bloomington creates intergenerational community through nature connection, folk arts, and traditional healing arts. Both of our crankies were created by local folks during Winter classes- an adults only Crankie class, and a kids Crankie class. We create crankies each year and perform them

First attempt at a crankie in a real empty egg. I think this will become a yearly tradition. Pumpkin crankies in the fall and eggshell crankies in the spring. And of course had to dye it pink. Found the perfect place to film this video at the Helen Link Daffodil Sanctuary. Go see fields of daffodils the month of April on weekends 10 am to 4 pm. Helen Link Daffodils: https://www.visitmorgancountyin.com/blog/post/helen-links-daffodils/ Indiana Daffodil Society: https://www.i

Thanks for drawing and bearing the winds at this month's First Thursday. This scroll has been through it, rained on, wrinkled, and ripped. But tape fixes all scrolls! Thanks to everyone for helping me out when they saw me fighting the wind. Also, all community scroll videos are on our YouTube! IU Arts & Humanities Council - https://artsandhumanities.indiana.edu/council-programs/first-thursdays/index.html

In conjunction with the We're Crankie: Crankie Festival please join sister-makers Nina and Sonya from The Far Woods Creative Studio for a hands-on workshop where we’ll be storytelling in miniature; transforming basic household matchboxes into charming folk-art moving pictures that tell a story by hand-cranking a long, illustrated scroll through a viewing window. Students Will: Build their own miniature theater Design and draw a continuous narrative scroll (an analog m

Help us create a community scroll at this April 2nd, First Thursdays Festival from 4 to 7 pm at the Fine Arts Plaza around Showalter Fountain. We're Crankie will have a partner booth. The event features 95 partner booths, 25 arts vendors, 2 performance stages, and more! Hosted by the IU Arts & Humanities Council - https://artsandhumanities.indiana.edu/council-programs/first-thursdays/index.html First Thursdays is looking for volunteers, if interested check out - https://do

This year's festival will feature work by Sam Bartlett with their crankie, B-A-N-J-O Sam Bartlett learned to make crankies from watching Bread & Puppet Theater productions as a teenager, growing up in Vermont. For the past 25 years he has played a role in the resurgent interest in this 19th century entertainment form, the moving panorama. Sam has taught crankie making workshops throughout the country, from schools in Homer, AK and Corvalis, OR to summer camps in Plymouth, MA.