Faith Belt, 2022 BFA Grad, Excels in Puppetry
Faith Belt is a Spring 2022 graduate of the University of Tennessee School of Art. This summer she received the 2023 Young Adult Scholarship to attend the Puppeteers of America’s 66th National Puppetry Festival in College Park, Maryland on July 18-22. The festival takes place at the University of Maryland, Jim Henson’s alma mater. The National Puppetry Festival brings puppeteers, makers, enthusiasts, and educators together to celebrate the puppetry arts. The festival’s theme is “Generations”, honoring those that went before, celebrating those who are with us now, and encouraging those to come.
Faith reports, “I will get to see multiple different performances by renowned puppeteers – including my personal inspirations like Alex and Olmstead. I will be attending puppetry workshops to learn new building and performing techniques, and to learn the business side of making puppetry a living. Most importantly, I will have the opportunity to talk with professional puppeteers face-to-face, ask them specific questions, share ideas, and meaningfully connect with them. I cannot wait!
She hopes to leave the festival inspired and more educated in the more technical aspects of puppetry. Her goal is to build shows to the best quality she can because she believes in puppetry’s power to tell stories in deeply meaningful ways. “This I want to bring back into my own communities,” she says, “to bring them wonder.”
Since graduating from Faith Belt’s life has been busy. She settled back home in Johnson City, TN, started a part-time job at a daycare, completed a large chalk drawing as part of Johnson City, TN’s Art Struck Festival, drew several large poster illustrations, and illustrated a children’s book which will be published and printed later this summer!
Although Faith graduated with a 2D concentration, she found that her art practice and interests were culminating fully into puppetry. It combines drawing, sculpting, moving, and music into a cohesive experience that has a powerful ability to tell stories in meaningful and poetic ways.
She says, “In a world that is becoming more and more digital, I find puppetry’s analog magic significantly refreshing and grounding. In this past year I have created and performed 3 puppet shows. In December of 2022, I developed and showed a 12-minute Christmas shadow play. This experience revealed that puppetry is not a solo sport and that involving your community – in this case, a bunch of enthusiastic grade-school kids and their parents – is a wonderful way to inspire wonder and tell an old story in a new, beautiful way.”
In early spring, Faith performed a short folktale called How Snowshoe Hare Rescued the Sun as a part of her local school system’s STEAM Day. It surprised her that a roomful of 40+ “wiggly kids” could become so quietly mesmerized and engaged in a shadow puppet show. The show that she is currently performing is a multi-layered shadow puppet show inspired by the Book of Jonah. “While I love performing puppet shows for kids,” Faith commented, “I believe puppetry works its best magic on adults. It has the potential to create an unexpectedly contemplative space. The Jonah show has so far been a proof of concept.”
Currently, Faith is in New Ulm, MN, participating in a blossoming collaborative art studio called SIMUL. This is the brainchild of the artist Jason Jaspersen, who Faith apprenticed with during the summer before my senior year at UT. She is doing further development on Jonah: the Shadow Puppet Play as well as working on other collaborative projects. She invites the public to seek out the next performance of that play that will take place in Johnson City, TN on August 12 and 13.