SWAN’S ISLAND (2006, 5 minutes, sound, DVD or 16mm)
explores gesture in painting, and how that relates to the hand held camera. Katy Martin paints on her own body, and Bill Brand captures the painted figure and its trace. In its choreography, SWAN’S ISLAND is a duet. The person filming and the person filmed are moving as one, and yet they are separate, each an island. Seeing and being seen are inextricably bound with emotions of love and loss, longing, and a sense of place.
GUILIN ROAD (2005, 15 minutes, sound, DVD)
Guilin Road combines observations I made in Shanghai, China with footage shot in my studio in New York. This video is a meditation on how we identify physically with the people and things we look at.
SKINSIDE OUT (2002, co-produced with Bill Brand, 10 minutes, sound, DVD or 16mm)
Images from the studio of the filmmakers, painted, are juxtaposed with footage of a construction barge along the Hudson. By examining both in relation to surface, the work paradoxically looks for what lies within. An interior, personal world takes shape within the coded, shared context of urban landscape
HANAFUDA / JASPER JOHNS (1981, 35 minutes, sound, DVD from Super-8mm film)
follows Johns and the printers at Simca Print Artists, creating three different silkscreen images from Johns' USUYUKI and CICADA series. Here, the camera was a pretext for structuring an apprenticeship with a major artist. The finished film recapitulates my process of learning, gleaned over time, as I observed Johns and the printers at work. What I wanted to know was how one generates a work of art – and for that matter, what is art, what work is involved, and how do ideas as opposed to physical labor drive the decision making process. The films became a meditation on art and craft, as well as on the dialectic of mind and body, concept and actual work.
Hanafuda is a game the printers played around the shop to pass the time between steps in the printmaking process. The cards are of flowers, based on the four seasons, suggesting mortality and regeneration. So the game, like art, is a gamble with time. It is also analogous to Johns’ shuffling of ideas, and his made-up rules and strategies for making art. The artist’s work is about trying things out, in physical form, in a series of moves aimed at capturing the elusive.
HANAFUDA / JASPER JOHNS has shown in museum around the world. Its soundtrack – an interview I did with Jasper Johns – has been published in full by the Museum of Modern in New York and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
SILKSCREENS (1978, 20 minutes, sound by Richard Teitelbaum, DVD from Super-8mm film)
Filmed at Simca Print Artists in New York, SILKSCREENS follows the choreography of printmakers at work, pulling the edition of Johns' print, THE DUTCH WIVES. Johns himself does not appear in that film. I got the notion of repetitive labor as a form of choreography from the French painter, Degas. For the sound track, I worked with the musician, Richard Teitelbaum. We used ambient sounds from the shop and the street outside to reflect the kind of hearing that you experience as you work, when sounds float in and out of consciousness.
DRAWING BREATH (1979, 4 minutes, silent, DVD from Super-8mm film)
On a sleepless night, I lit a candle, and began a pixillation in a mirror. Why is my own image so elusive?
DAFFODILS (1981, 3 minutes, silent, DVD from Super-8mm film )
A poem to my husband in the early days of our romance. This film was included in the survey, Big as Life: A History of 8mm Film in America at the Museum of Modern Art.
FLOWERS AND BIRDS (1979-2006, 9 minutes, silent, DVD from super 8mm film)
On vacation with Bill's family, I made this film about the pleasure of looking. At the time, I was steeped in Japanese aesthetics.