UNEARTH
A Series of Explorations Based in Nature
I've always been a slow hiker -- I'm far more focused on what's covering the ground than the ground I've covered. These animated musings began with an attempt to bring the outdoors into the studio, and lately reflect a determination to bring the studio outdoors. An animator's task is to create and control movement, but in these collaborations with nature, I'm seeking to unearth motion I couldn't have invented myself.
Strata-cut is a particular method of animation in which the artist creates a long log of clay, internally packed and loaded with varying imagery, that is then sliced in thin sheets and shot frame by frame, revealing the internal motion. In this series, I applied the same concept to lumber and logs, traveling through the trees and revealing their internal motions. Sound by TM Rives.
It becomes easier to justify your collections if you animate them. These bottles were gathered at Dead Horse Bay, and sequenced in a method of animation called 'replacement frame' inspired by Paul Bush. Sound by TM Rives.
While at a residency in Finland, I found myself wrapped up in the emergent shapes of Scots Pine bark on my daily hikes. The forest floor was covered in these delicate pieces, encased in flaky orange bark. I imagined a metamorphic replacement frame animation, but found them to have an almost liquid quality while animating them under the camera. The soundtrack was recorded using tree bark with the help of Mel Chilianis.
The phenakistoscope is one of the earliest animation 'toys' - a precursor to the moving image as we know it. This iteration is made from manzanita leaves gathered on a hike in Big Bear. Manzanita is an evergreen shrub whose red branches are fire resistant, and whose leaves are used by Northern Californian Indigenous tribes to treat poison oak rashes, among other things. Sound by TM Rives.
I've a far-too-large collection of leaves. These aspen leaves were all gathered at Pando, a clonal aspen colony in Utah once thought to be the Earth's largest organism. On display below at Art on the Block NYC.
My residency in Finland overlapped with the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. In an invented ritual of worship, I shot a 24-frame cycle of hand drawn animation hourly over the course of the 24 hours of the Solstice, using a hybrid animation stand/sundial made from found materials.
One of my rituals while at the residency in Finland was a daily sunset walk to the lake, past this field of dandelions. Just one week in, a windy night had wiped the field clean. What if I could put them back together, piece by piece?
