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Lou Hemler

@elouhem

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Sculpture • Puppetry • Illustration

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“Only the Earth” ep release show: thur 11/12 @asianartsphilly This ensemble performs live for the first time, plus @mayakerenmaya & shadow-casters @maisie_goodnight + @elouhem

thur nov 12
7:30 doors; 8pm show
$15 adv / $20 do

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Join us Friday, October 16th from 7:00-8:30 pm for a night of Sound & Shadow at Area 405! Doors at 6:30. 🕯️🪔🕯️

We're keeping the wonder going for Sweaty Everything with a performance showcase as we gather in dim light to hear stories. Featuring projections, music, and costumes, you are in for a treat!

Featuring:
Georgia Beatty (@georgia.beatty) in a Little Moon Theatre Co. Production

Maisie O'Brien (@maisie_goodnight) and Lou Hemler (@elouhem) in "Beneath"

and Jesi Jordan (@jesi__jordan) in "Yoga with Jesi" and "Phone Call"

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Parade the circle! Happened! 4 months ago! Egrets (from last years rain out) and 7 new swallow puppets! And a big assist to make monarch butterflies (Krikit!) and fabulous cloud costumes (Lou, Asa,Devyn, Julie and of course my mom!) and upgrades to the egrets with help from ❤️ Richard ❤️engineering the wings and bending pvc innovation and brilliance among lots more! Asa and Devyn (leg modifications!)and cloud face paint designs! (Devyn! With Lou and Asa painting I think!)

It was so special to have such a talented, funny, supportive Spiral Q crew and Richard’s mom for the 2 days leading up to the parade. Really making more than I ever imagined happen!

Plus what an all star sweet group of puppeteers with longtime parade friends including Sheila (and kids!), Annie, Jesse, and Phil and more. Long live parade.

I sort of lost track of who took what photos and a few are screen shot from strangers posts but thanks I think to aforementioned strangers, Lou, my dad? Myself? And Phil for photos though I don’t think any of these are his because I was scared I didn’t know which were his haha.

#paradethecircle @clevelandmuseumofart

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Join us this Sunday 9/20 & Sunday 9/27 from 1-4pm with artist Lou Hemler in a papercrete workshop.

Learn how to use recycled paper and basic hardware materials to make papercrete for outdoor sculptures. We will be building on cement blocks to create decorative sculptures for the Iglesias Gardens!

All materials provided.

🧑‍🎨What is Papercrete?
Papercrete is a low-cost, lightweight building material made from recycled paper pulp and cement. It can be used to create planters, small sculptural forms, and experimental building elements like panels or blocks.

Join us 9/20 & 9/27, Sunday 1-4pm for this workshop. No sign-up needed, come as you are, and let’s make some sculptures!

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Thank you to everyone who joined our first event with Penpals for Palestine! at Cesar Andreu Iglesias Garden last month. It was a wonderful afternoon spent with the community, making paper and postcards together, and it kickstarted our fall workshop series at the garden.

Here’s a quick look at what’s coming up this fall:

🌱Sunday 9/20 & 9/27, 1–4pm
Papercrete Sculpting with Lou Hemler

Learn how to use recycled paper and basic hardware materials to make papercrete for outdoor sculptures!

🌱Sunday, 10/11, 2–6pm
Art Picnic, a share & learn potluck with Philly Dye Club & Penpals for Palestine!
Live music from Fire Museum Presents: Raices Boricuas, Line On Some Trip, Interminable

Share your creative endeavors with the neighborhood! Join Philly Dye Club for a community bundle dye, and enjoy live music from Fire Museum Presents artists.

🧑‍🎨 All events are free, all ages welcomed!

We hope to see you there, follow for updates on our event details coming up. Picture of a table filled with art materials, including stamps, markers, stickers, etc. In an outdoor space with plants and wooden fences.

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Come see us Sept 11th and 12th as part of Fringe at Studio 34! Minneapolis’s one and only Felicia Cooper @felicia__cooper debuts in Philly with her solo show PLEASE! a high-intensity ride using puppetry, projection, and pop music to explore the dynamics of surveillance and desire with a pea-eating cam girl.

Lou @elouhem and I are so excited to be co-presenters of this show and opening the night for Felicia with our collaboration “Beneath”, a shadow puppetry performance that travels alongside soil dwellers to world build together through uncertainty.

We’d love to see you there!

🎟️Tickets and more info in my bio or through Philly fringe website.
📷 2nd and 3rd slide photo credit Richard Termine.
@studio34philly @34.arts

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Gorgeous Blankenburg Parade photos have dropped from beloved photographer @rayephoto. This year’s parade was one of our best school parades yet, with families, neighbors and alumni coming out to cheer on our Blankenburg K-8th graders as they absolutely 🌟SHINED🌟as they paraded through the streets.

We look forward to working at Blankenburg again next year to lift up the current current school community’s power and the the legacy of our neighborhood school.

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Meet this year’s Blankenburg 4th graders’ puppets!

This Winter and Spring Spiral Q teaching artists Lou Hemler, and Elaine Arias guided the students through giant puppet making and character development while also introducing them to how art can be used to express yourself.

Meet Timothy Archives, Jahlaya, Navayah, Albert, Ivory, and Raud!

In their final class today students will receive a set of puppet trading cards to hang onto the puppet making memories into the future. ❤️

#giantpuppet #youtharteducation #westphilly

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Show up for Blankenburg Elementary this June 3rd for the 10th annual Blankenburg Parade! No matter what the district says we are all Blankenburg strong. Please join us in celebrating the students, teachers, administrators, and families of the Blankenburg community as a volunteer or by posting up along the route to cheer the parade on. Blankenburg students’ have been working this semester with Spiral Q artists through our SparQ in Schools program to create work that showcases who they are and what they care about including giant puppets, flags, chants, drumming, and movement.

Want to volunteer? Support the parade as a:
Traffic Marshal • Water distributor * Photographer or Videographer
Email community@spiralq.org or check out our Volunteer info doc and RSVP for in our bio for more information.

10th Annual Blankenburg Parade
Wednesday, June 3rd
Parade line-up at noon
Parade begins at 1PM

Parade begins and ends at Blankenburg schoolyard on Merion
(Rain date: Friday June 5th at 1PM)

#westphilly #philadelphiaschooldistrict

Shoutout to @rayephoto for almost all the images in this poster ❤️

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IT’S A WRAP! 2 weekends, 12 performances, and 600+ tickets sold for our 2nd year hosting Philly Theatre Week at Studio 34. Swipe to slides and clips of…
• Benoît François and Sterling Duns interrogating an audience member onstage in THE ORANGE TREE
• King Luna performing at PHILLY CLOWN SLAM
• Chris Davis giving a preview of THE 40-YEAR-OLD BALLERINO
• Matt O’Hare soundchecking an original song from FASCIST GROOVE
• Jim Julien as “The Swallow Artist” at PHILLY PUPPET SLAM
• Maisie O’Brien and Lou Hemler with an OHP show at PHILLY PUPPET SLAM
• The cast of PUNCH BACK duking it out
• Janine Cunningham and Matt O’Hare singing “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts” by X in FASCIST GROOVE
• Studio 34’s Lounge on any given night at PHILLY THEATRE WEEK!

Thanks to all the artists and Theatre Philadelphia for partnering with us, and for of YOU who came out to see these powerful shows.

Thanks to all the artists and Theatre Philadelphia for partnering with us, and for of HOU who came out to see these powerful shows.

#phillytheatreweek #phillytheatreweek2026 #puppetslam #clownslam #diytheatre

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Peoplehood pageant spotlight - Mariposas and water droplets - Mariposas brought to life by children of all ages joyfully danced in the bowl led by a giant monarch and moth when suddenly they became trapped in large orange fences. The narrator freezes the action of the scene to ask the crowd if this is the world we want, where our butterflies can be trapped, and are encouraged to remember the tools we have available despite how bleak and scary the world may seem.

Water droplets, like tears, join the narrator with calls to action and reminders written by immigration rights leaders such as: “you have rights,” “record,” “make a plan,” and “we are powerful together.”

As the butterflies chanted “let us out” the audience calls and responds to the water, helping to activate the water droplets to melt ice and break the orange fence, freeing our mariposas to dance once again and follow the egrets and flotilla boats in their natural migratory patterns.

Gorgeous moth and butterfly giant puppet ❤️artists Maisie O’Brien @maisie_oh _oh and Lou Hemler @elouhem

Thank you to @fototornado @_taliteatime_ @jpiette660@l @rayephoto for video and photos ❤️

#giantpuplets #immigration #monarchbutterfly

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I haven’t posted here in a long time. I have been so filled with gratitude, surprise, rage, grief, despair, accomplishment, confusion, horror, [insert more emotions here] that I have had a hard time wrestling my little words to fill the weight on either end of the spectrum. That being said maybe

the grief alive in my body is also love.

So I’m trying to break my own silence in gratitude for the community that helps to sustain me in so many ways. I am so grateful of the opportunities from last year that allowed me to fall in love with Cleveland, befriend the most beautiful Willow Tree, and meet a Great Lake for the first time. I am so thankful for the time to build new, and nurture old, connections with beloveds near and far. Here’s a little of what was last year as it blends and bleeds into a new year of being a cowboy which is to say

if you need to laugh into some heartbreak:

Come see my non-binary genderfull Wild West show. There will be live music, whiskey and more 🐴🫘🤠 info in the last slide and tickets in my bio 🤠🫘🐴

#newyear #samecowboy #cleveland #philadelphia #figuringitout

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