Stories
A (mostly) true story about a rodent in our kitchen. Sound by Kurt Rohde.
Music by Kurt Rohde. Childhood memories of New York City beaches. My maternal grandfather was a motorcycle policeman whose beat was Coney Island.
A hand-painted animation about my mother-in-law, Anita Greenstein's, experience in hiding in Nazi Germany as a young girl. Against all odds, three generations of the family survived underground in and around Berlin, eventually settling in Portland, OR. The animation is an imagined narrative from Anita's point of view as a six-year-old child based on a memoir written by her father, Robert Graetz. The full animation is eight minutes long.
Cha-Cha lesson as a metaphor for marriage references my Brooklyn-Jewish childhood in the nineteen sixties. The dancing couple teeter precariously on a tower of mah jong tiles while cha cha-ing to strains of Xavier Cougat's "Tea for Two".
Viewed through the lens of my matriarchal lineage, Family History in an animated painting that explores issues of vulnerability and risk and how each new experience is filtered through our perceptions of previous ones. The process of creating Family History, on a single sheet of paper by repeatedly layering new images over old becomes a metaphor for life itself. Family History received the “Silver Coyote, Critic’s Choice Award” at the Gold Coyote Super Short Film Festival in Oregon in May 2009.
Terremoto (earthquake in Italian) was created in response to the April 6, 2009 earthquake that struck the Abbruzzo region of Italy while I was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. This hand painted stop motion animation intertwines personal dreams and memories with images culled from Roman history and mythology to examine the fragile nature of our existence and how easily shattered the illusion of safety can be.
When my daughter Clara turned 11, I invited her friends and their mothers to my studio to pose for me individually. During the drawing sessions with the mothers, the conversations turned to the challenges of motherhood, and how their mothering techniques had been influenced by their own mothers. I subsequently recorded those reflections about their mothers and wove them together in a sound track to accompany the large-scale graphite drawings. They have been exhibited at the Art Gym at Marylhurst University as part of a group exhibition "Motherlode", and a one-person exhibition "Materfamilia" at Fairbanks Gallery, Oregon State University.
30 second film about the range of human emotion. 2008
Hand-painted stop-motion animation created in response to Dana Reason's musical composition "Drones". Premiering in April 2014 at the Art Center, Corvallis, OR in conjunction with the Between the Cracks series.
Chronicles my grandfather's journey escaping Czarist Russia, traveling through Cuba to New York City, and his daughter's battle with polio.
Music by Kurt Rohde.
Music by Kurt Rohde.
Response to an uninsured family member's struggle to overcome a deadly fungus.
Terremoto (earthquake in Italian) was created in response to the April 6, 2009 earthquake that struck the Abbruzzo region of Italy while I was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. This hand painted stop motion animation intertwines personal dreams and memories with images culled from Roman history and mythology to examine the fragile nature of our existence and how easily shattered the illusion of safety can be.
A visual response to the complex history of Israel's changing geography. Created after a month-long stay in Jerusalem as a participant in the pilot program for the Jerusalem Cultural Fellowship, a collaboration between the Foundation For Jewish Culture and Mishkenot Sha’ananim.
song: Chalifot by Hadag Nahash
Music by Kurt Rohde.