2020, Hallie Ford Museum of Art

     

     Animation is seen as a playful, childish medium, but it is capable of expressing so much more. I combined cartoonish and surreal animation styles with adult themes and the aesthetics of horror to mimic the dissonance of not feeling at home in your home. The rough, handmade quality and a worn vintage feel were achieved through charcoal drawing,  to create the feeling of memory and nostalgia. The black and white palette of charcoal animation creates an overcast effect of stillness and mystery. The medium itself creates darkly whimsical ghosts through the process of erasing and redrawing over and over again leaving imprints. 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

In the desk installation, which recalls common features in private spaces, I sought to create a balance between warm and inviting, and unsettling and cold. The tension in the atmosphere of the animation extends into physical space with the use of  color and light. On and around the desk are materials I used when creating the animation including concept and background art. These give a sort of “peek behind the curtain” a look into the process of how the animation was made. The backgrounds are a moment, now frozen, that we can latch on to. Animation is built upon individual images subsumed in the experience of the whole. Stopping to give close inspection allows us to see the mark-making, erasure, and build-up of the charcoal. 

     Just as animation gives the illusion of life to images, houses become alive as we live in and are shaped by them. The ghost and the man exist in the house together, but it doesn’t become a home until each of them recognizes the trace elements they bring with them. Houses are breathing spaces that keep traces of those who lived before and are also remade with each new inhabitant. I invite the viewer to think about the places they have called home, and how the relationships of house and inhabitant have affected them.