How to Close the Gap Between Animator and Audience

Have you been at an animation screening where afterwards audience members walk towards the exit whispering to each other: - That was the dumbest shit I ever saw?

I've always wondered why there is such a disconnect between the animators making their films and the audiences who deem their work stupid. Yes, we, animators, mostly live in our heads where anything is possible and we mostly mingle with other animators who get our strange sense of humor and even encourage it. But why can't 'normal' people get it, too? Why is so difficult for them to open their minds to stuff that is bizarre and surprising in an abnormal way?

Thankfully, there is now a film festival that is working on closing this abyss of misunderstanding between animators and audiences. To make sure no one missed the point of the festival it calls itself The Dumbest Sh!t I Ever Saw , priding to be the animation anti-festival. It is organized by two super talented animators Joy Buran and Noelle Melody who are not averse to strange and bizarre on top of having an excellent sense of humor.

I made several very short films for the festival, because it is fun to make something without feeling the scorching breath of an audience on your neck: - Is this good enough? Is this funny in the 'normal' way? Is the story 'clear' enough? Does this have a purpose? etc

Fuck it. Sometimes I just want to be free and make shit without any concern for comprehension of others.

So, here it is, one of my shorts: "The Origin of the Words". If you don't get it, it's OK. It's only 22 seconds short and you can move on towards the rest of your life. But if you'd like to know what this film means, ask in the comments, I'll be happy to explain. Thank you!

Enigma of Models: What Are They Thinking?

Have you ever wondered what a model is thinking while standing bare in front of you so you can draw their human body in various poses? From the moment when for the first time I pulled out my sharpened pencils and roll of newsprint, and the model took her robe off and stood still in the spotlight of the small stage with her face focussed, a mysterious gleam of a saint in her eyes, I have been wondering about that. 

This enigma of models had to be probed. Being an obnoxiously curious creature , a few years into life drawing I dared to ask models about it. What you are thinking when standing there? 

Most of them smiled and shook their heads. Some of them said:

- Nothing of importance.

Of course, they meant: Nothing of importance to YOU. The last resort when your body is exposed in all its glory and misery ( just thinking how my personal history can be read and misinterpreted from the scars on my body makes me shudder with unease) is the privacy of thoughts .

Then, in the last week's New Yorker, there is was a short story by Tom McCarthy, who as a poor, young, aspiring writer had a modeling gig in Prague. I was thrilled to read this passage:

" Standing still for forty minutes—absolutely still, without moving a finger or shifting your line of sight—is something few of us have ever been called on to do. Even fewer have done it naked while circled by twenty people whose gazes are intently focussed on each bend and angle of your body. What I can report of it is this: nothing I’ve ever done, before or since, has afforded me such a state of concentration—intense, extended, charged. I would run whole passages of text—Baudelaire, Rilke, Ponge, whomever I’d been reading, even my own small works in progress—through my head, forward, backward, taking apart each image, amplifying each metre and sub-rhythm in the loaded silence. I probably learned more about literature in the six months I spent on the podium than in the three previous years of study. I also learned about space, in an immediate, almost visceral way."

Finally, an answer to my inquiry! This explains the saintly gleam in the models' eyes!

To read the whole story "The Best, If Worst-Paid, Job I Ever Had" by Tom McCarthy  CLICK HERE.

But regarding the people who draw models - they keep seeing things that aren't there. Drawing a human body can be a difficult mountain to climb. A life drawing from yesterday:

Finding Hidden Life in Life Drawing

Life drawing is like an exercise - when you don't do it, you lose it. To be in a decent shape, you have to do it regularly. But, like any exercise or obligatory task, it can become tedious. 

This week we had an excellent model, with a beautiful body and inspiring poses. All of us were scribbling feverishly on our papers, trying to put down the lines and capture the exquisite, fleeting beauty in front of us in less than 2 minutes. Then the model took a 10 minute pose that I drew in 2 minutes and I got restless. Of course, it was not a good drawing but instead of trying to get better at it I got bored. As an animator, I am mainly interested in a gesture, not in making pretty pictures. I also don't have a lot of patience. So I stopped at this:

- What else is there for me to draw? - I thought. I had 8 more minutes to look at this pose until change to another. Suddenly, I saw the object the model'd body was resting on. It was alive! With renewed vigor I started to sketch this:

Then of course, I started seeing things every time the model took a pose:

The moral of this story: a little boredom can spur something new into existence. 

Lets Celebrate World's Mental Health Day!

One day when I was about 12 I had a panic attack that I might be losing my mind. Before that moment I had perceived my mind as a reliable source of somewhat clear thoughts in accord with what other people like my Mom, Dad and a history teacher I respected thought of reality outside my mind. But suddenly I became aware that the clarity of my thoughts was only a thin veneer covering up the other side of my Mind that was dark, sinister and capable to spin out of control.

- I will go mad if I don't watch out, - I thought. The only way I knew to watch out was to watch my mind. So I started to scrutinize my mind and it's products. Between pretty keen observations (the neighbor's jacket is thorn, he must had a fight with his other neighbor again) and rational learning (the Thirty Years War took place from 1618 to 1648) it managed to mix in some thoughts that were a bit off and needed an additional attention:

- How valid is this thought about running away from home and living in a forest eating moss?

- How about this thought to continue swimming away from the beech until I reach Sweden? 

- Should I follow this thought of jumping from the roof of a building to see if I can fly?

Somehow in the light of my examination the thought of swimming 150 km from Kurzeme to Swedish Island Gotland (150 km) lost it's appeal. Of course, swimming in cold water made me feel invigorated and powerful, and Sweden had always emitted irresistible glow of a forbidden fruit, but the rational part of my mind reminded me that the Baltic Sea was filled with Soviet military boats looking for potential defectors swimming to the West. Any defector would be shot, then fished out, identified, and then whole family plus the dead defector would be shipped to Siberia to be eaten by swarms of mosquitoes and bears. The thought of harming my family sent me back to the sandy beach of Kurzeme.

Turning lights on to my mind has been my strategy of staying sane. Talking to other people about my thoughts and feelings has been very helpful, too, to identify the ones that are perceived as scary and irrational by other people.

I am happy that we are celebrating World's Mental Health Day on October 10th! It helps us all to understand better mental illness and helps to erase stigma attached to it. If we were not afraid to be stigmatized for speaking about our condition we would be more open about it and seek help before it is too late.

Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival is screening my feature film "Rocks In My Pockets" as part of their Mental Health Day program on Monday, October 10th at 2 PM, at AK Bell Library Theatre in Perth.

MK Gallery is also screening "Rocks In My Pockets" on October 10th, at 7 PM in Milton Kaynes, UK, to celebrate the Mental Health Day and to incite a conversation around genetics, stigma and hope in the face of mental illness. 

If you are curious about the film, please take a look at the trailer:

Happy Mental Health Day!

Peep in on My Animated Work at San Francisco International Airport!

Press release from San Francisco Arts Commission:

New Peephole Cinema Delights Travelers at San Francisco International Airport

Posted on September 29th, 2016

San Francisco Arts Commission brings Laurie O’Brien’s celebrated Peephole Cinema to SFO’s Interim Boarding Area B

Signe Baumane's "ABC of Travel": several same-letter families travel to a reunion.

SAN FRANCISCO: September 29 – Travelers passing through San Francisco International Airport’s Interim Boarding Area B can view a series of silent film shorts inspired by travel and the writings of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) through dime-sized peepholes. The installation, commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission, is the latest iteration of Laurie O’Brien’s Peephole Cinema, which includes satellite projects in Brooklyn and Los Angeles. SFO Peephole Cinema: To Travel is to Live includes six silent shorts by Signe Baumane, Kota Ezawa and Ms. O’Brien that will be on view for the next year and a half at which point a new iteration will be installed.

“We are thrilled to bring Laurie O’Brien’s Peephole Cinema to San Francisco International Airport,” said Director of Cultural Affairs Tom DeCaigny, “This is the first temporary multi-media installation the Arts Commission has presented at SFO and we are confident that travelers will enjoy discovering these wonderfully creative short films as they pass through the terminal.”

“The temporary Boarding Area B is an important step in our transformation of Terminal 1, and we are excited to feature this installation in the interim facility,” said Airport Director Ivar C. Satero. “Public art is an integral part of our airport’s identity; it elevates the travel experience and provides a sense of place to our facilities. We thank the San Francisco Arts Commission for this inspiring work.”

In 1891, Thomas Edison with the help of William Dickson created the kinetoscope, a large wooden box that when peered into through an eye-sized hole revealed a short motion picture. With the invention of the film projector, movie viewing evolved from a solitary activity into a social experience that gave rise to modern-day movie theaters.  O’Brien’s playful SFO Peephole Cinema: To Travel is to Live explores how, with the advent of the personal digital device, our collective experience of technology and entertainment has reverted back to a solo experience.

According to O’Brien, “Peephole Cinema invites elements of both the old and the new, the shared and the solitary experience.”

FILM TITLES
Signe Baumane: ABC of Travel (2016) and The Purpose of Travel (2016)
Kota Ezawa:  Supercalifragilisticexpialidocous (2016) and Moonwalk (2016)
Laurie O’Brien:  Emilia the Typist (2016) and Jack’s City (2016)

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Oakland-based Kota Ezawa often reworks images from popular culture, film and art history, stripping them down to their core elements. His simplified versions remain easily recognizable and potent, the result of a process that illuminates the hold certain images have on their viewers. Working in a range of mediums such as digital animation, slide projections, light boxes, paper cut-outs, collage, print, and wood sculptures, Ezawa maintains a keen awareness of how images shape our experience and memory of events.

His work has been displayed in museum solo exhibitions including at Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA (2015), Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York (2013), the Vancouver Art Gallery’s outdoor exhibition space Offsite (2012) and the Hayward Gallery Project Space in London (2007). His work has been included in group exhibitions such as, Out of the Ordinary at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC (2013), After Photoshop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (2012), and The More Things Change at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2011 Ezawa’s work has earned a number of awards, including the SECA Art Award of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2006), a Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation (2010) and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award (2003). His work is included in renowned collections such as: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; MOMA, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, among others.

Laurie O’Brien is an artist working in video, installation, animation, and performance.   Her interdisciplinary media work is collaborative, interactive, sociopolitical, hand-made and digital.    She is interested in hybrid forms of expression that combine and defy definitions and categories.  Her animations, performances and video installations have been exhibited in numerous galleries nationally and internationally.  Her work often focuses on the blurring of fact and fiction.  A metaphor that continues to influence her work, the puppet, finds expression in unexpected forms with links to technology, identity, duplicity and deception.  She is an Assistant Professor of Visual Media in the Photography Department at RIT.  She lives in both Brooklyn and Rochester.

At the age of 14, Signe Baumane began publishing short stories in Latvia. She received a BA in Philosophy from Moscow State University, then started to work at Riga’s Animated Film Studio as a cel painter. With support of government grants, Signe made 3 animated shorts in Latvia, then moved to New York and spent four years working for independent animator Bill Plympton as an art director and production manager. In 1998, Signe received her US green card as ‘extraordinary ability alien’ and began making films at her own studio. In 2005 she became a NYFA Fellow in Film. She received two grants from the Jerome Foundation – one for her animated short “Birth”, the other for her animated feature “Rocks In My Pockets”. She also received 3 grants from NYSCA. Signe has written, directed and animated 15 shorts and one feature film, which collectively have been accepted in over 300 film festivals around the world and received many awards.

The San Francisco Arts Commission is the City agency that champions the arts as essential to daily life by investing in a vibrant arts community, enlivening the urban environment and shaping innovative cultural policy. Our programs include: Civic Art Collection, Civic Design Review, Community Investments, Public Art, SFAC Galleries and Street Artist Licensing. To learn more visit, sfartscommission.org.

Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series Speech (2015)

University of Michigan Penny Stamps School of Arts and Design invited me to give a speech at their Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series on October 25th, 2015 (almost a year ago!).

My speech was called "Sex, Madness and Dentists" but when I got there I saw how many young women were in the audience and felt compelled to talk about my sex in a male dominated industry and my madness in the face of triple difficulty of being an independent artist, being a woman and being bi-polar. Dentists didn't fit in those 60 minutes.

Here's the video of the speech:

Elephant in a Jam

I captioned this picture as: Can't get in and can't get out.

What would be YOUR caption? What does this orange-to-pink elephant look like to you?

Body the Beautiful

Art is different from Nature with that it has a human point of view. Human body might be a result of myriads of human cells dividing (in a human body nearly two trillion cells divide each day) but the vantage point from where you view it will determine your conclusion: is this body beautiful or not?

I have not studied Art, I only practiced one form of Art (animation) for last 20 years so I can barely talk about Art and I can barely draw. But that doesn't preclude me from having a point of view.

Humans develop a point of view on a bare human body with the help of nude beaches and their bedrooms. A point of view on human bodies in nude beaches: - Eek! A Bedroom point of view: -Whee!

But there is another place where to form a point of view on human body: a life drawing studio. Few years ago I started going to life drawing to see if it would improve my animation work (it did!). I am still not very good at it because I just can't make myself to see the anatomical structure formed by bones under all the skin and fat, because the moment the human model takes clothes off and steps on the small podium front of the small group of artists I go: -Ah! A strong emotion of awe, amazement and gratitude swell in my chest and tears flow to my eyes obstructing the view.

In that light, on that podium a human body seems like a temple, a mysterious vessel full of unreachable divinity. 

Then the model takes a pose and the timer beeps, indicating a start of one minute pose. You have one minute to capture the Magic, the Mystery, the Divine and put it in a jar like a butterfly. But, like a butterfly, the Magic is evasive. I end up with nothing in my jar, just smudges of lead. 

One minute attempt

Then the model takes another one minute pose and you start the chase again.

Sometimes, but rarely, I show my drawings to other people, like to you today. I am ashamed of my inability to draw because people assume as an artist I am better at life drawing than I really am. But this particular model (see below) was so amazing that I thought my drawings were particularly inspired and I dared to show these sketches to a friend (not an artist).

- Why does she feel so proud? - he asked. - There is nothing ideal about her shape.

I was stung, as if he insulted me personally.

- She was the most beautiful model I have seen in a long time, - I said. - And part of her beauty was being so confident. She was channeling the light from within and from Above.

- I just think she should be more realistic and humble about her body, - he replied.

Two minute pose

Quick pose

We may have two trillion cells that divide every day and miraculously we never fall apart as a result of those divisions,  but who will protect us from each other's opinions and points of view?

Research II

When they tell you children are like angels - blank pages in books of purity and innocence that Life and Devil start to write on their dark messages in black ink around teen age - please do not believe them. Every fool who has held a newborn baby knows children scream when they want something. They scream for food, love, affection and toys. When they grow up they learn to push aside their competitors - other babies, small dogs and a-month-old kittens - to get to the desired goods.

One important thing about children you should really know -  scientists confirmed recently that besides being cry-babies babies are also racists. If you read that article you'll find out the reason why:

“The idea of in-group bias is well established in behavioral science, and it has its roots long ago, in humanity’s tribal era.”

From the moment they are born, children learn to distinguish between the people in their group and the outsiders. It only gets worse as children grow (until their Prefrontal Cortex develops and as adults they become aware of their bias and learn to correct it). Which brings me back to my story about school uniforms.

In Russia a school uniform for girls looked like this:

While in Latvia it looked like this, a whole class:

- Ah, - you'd say. - I see no big difference! Its just a uniform!

Well, it's easy for you to say. The eyes of 8-year olds are like those of an eagle, discerning the smallest difference from the furthest distance, anything that would give them clues to start an abuse of The Other. Have you ever tried to enter a classroom, full of 8-year-olds, dressed in the wrong uniform? On September 1st, after my return from Sakhalin to Latvia, I did just that and instantly was tagged as The Other. When the teacher asked me to introduce myself to the class, and I said ... :

- Hi, my name is Signe Baumane. My family recently moved to this town from Sakhalin...

... the 35 of my future classmates detected Russian accent in my Latvian speech which gave them permission to hate me. After 1941 Latvians considered Russians as representatives of occupying powers and harbored quiet but bitter resentments towards the privileges and entitlements the newly arrived Russians enjoyed. Of course, being a second class citizens in his/her own country no Latvian could express openly their hostility towards any Russian. But I was a perfect target - a Latvian speaking with a Russian accent. And so the bottled up resentment was unleashed on me.

Or, perhaps I am giving political overtures to something that was more simple: I was awkward, ugly, quiet, not very bright and my Mom was a teacher at the same school (kids of teachers were also hated - they were perceived as having unfair advantage).

Whatever happened on that first day, I was not able to shake off the tag of The Other for the next 10 years, however I tried. Observing my sufferings stemming from social exclusion my Prefrontal Cortex grew to develop bias against populars. 

But wait, I just watched Blank on Blank interview with Kurt Cobain (animated by Pat Smith) and he said: " i felt so different so crazy" in school. Curt Cobain? You'd think in high school he was an incarnate of the populars, no?

Most of my friends felt different and crazy in school, excluded from the popular circles. But WHERE are those populars? Perhaps the people we perceived as populars also felt miserable and excluded? Have they lived to tell their tale?

Research on Sakhalin I

When I started to work on visual aspects of my new project I had to make sure I get visual details right. For example, what was the standard school uniform in the USSR on September 1st when I went to school for the first time? Of course, I could fake it, after all, my story is of the fantastical sort, and who cares about old school uniforms anyway, but I wanted to see if the old times could inspire me. The matter of school uniforms is not that simple in my case. 

I was born in Latvia (it was part of Soviet Union at that time) and when I was 5 my family went for work to Sakhalin, the Russian island next to Japan. Age 5 is the time when a person finally emerges from the mysterious glob of subconscious flesh that is a baby. My first solid memories are from Sakhalin. Like the first love, this island is unforgettable.

Read about Sakhalin on Wikipedia

If you have been to Far East you'd know how amazing the Nature is there: overwhelming with its beauty and overpowering with its forces. The amount of snow alone could kill you.

Check out Sakhalin photos on Flickr

But back to school uniforms. Despite the dangers of unsupervised childhood (my parents had to leave me and my sister alone when they went to work, because kindergartens were full and no one's ever heard of babysitters in the good old USSR) I survived and reached the mature age of 7 when by the law of the land I was required to go to school. I put on the uniform and went with my older sister.

Upon my arrival the school immediately pointed out at everything that was odd and irregular about me: I didn't know which hand was right or left, my cotton tights weren't so tight and kept sliding down in folds of an accordion and I didn't have any books nor bag with me. After all, I have spent 2 previous years in wild, like this:

But I believed in education, so I persisted. Every morning I would put the uniform on and would go to the school on a makeshift sidewalk that was supposed to keep the Forces of Nature at bay. The school eventually grew to like me. A couple of fellow classmates thought there was something special about me being a Latvian in their Russian speaking class, although by then I barely spoke any Latvian.

Then the Disaster struck: one day when I was 8 my parents packed to go back to Latvia. 
(to be continued)