Art Time in Animation and Painting

In this two-quarter, studio-based program students will investigate the ways in which painting and experimental animation convey emotive, visual narratives. How do these processes inform each other? What does time as a formal element (stillness and movement, layered and unfolding) do to evoke mood, tone, recognition and mystery?

The Winter quarter will consist of building a theoretical and technical foundation focused on research and experimentation andwe will foster a close-knit learning community with plenty of individual feedback from faculty and peer groups.Our curriculum will contain thematic readings and lectures and studio process methodologies. We will study contemporary issues in art history, and 2D still and time-based studio skills. Together we will embark on the slow and ethical unfolding of narrative storytelling that reaches beyond the surface by showing and not telling. The final project of the quarter will be a collaborative interpretation of a short story to create an ontological understanding of the story rather than a literal one.

The Spring quarter will allow students to focus on building an individual hybrid project (elements of painting and animation) on a topic of their choice in response to the program theme(s) that have developed in the winter. Emphasis will be on evolving a narrative arc, conducting research, creating a project pitch, and producing a thematic art piece.

Program activities will include an intensive theory and practice-based program withskill-building workshops, lectures, seminars, peer study, andartistic research. Studio workshops will be in 2D and time-based work in painting, drawing, and experimental animation techniques like paint-on-glass, frame-by-frame hand-drawn animation, under the camera and cut-out animation, pixilation, rotoscoping and more.We will remotely attend the Evergreen Art Lecture Series via Zoom, which presents a broad range of interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary art issues by artists, writers, activists, and scholars.

Program assignments will develop skills in materials experimentation and medium-specific skills, developing thematic creative assignments, practice with close reading of images and texts, creative research, and skills in analysis and interpretation in seminar papers. We will examine fictional, theoretical, and artistic texts from the following creators: Amy Sillman, William Kentridge, Villem Flusser, Elizabeth Grosz, Yuri Norstein, Jan Svankmajer, George Saunders, Daniil Kharms, Julio Florencio Cortázar, and Clarise Lispector among others.