Videos, Installations and Animations

I have had the honor and pleasure to work with and learn from my friend and colleague Raquel Salvatella dePrada on the animation ArtPoem and a film Resonance. Our collaborations have been so fruitful, as we discover the subjects of our projects and thrive upon each other’s methods of working. She made my images move, thrash and dance with the magic she possesses.

The works we have created together has introduced new ways for me to envision including tactile surfaces, remnants of discarded materials, repurposing unusable prints into different working and finals stages of my woodcut prints.

The work and collaborations that Raquel and I have done together has been one of the most exciting and cherished aspects of my artistic practice. And of course, the results are equally as rewarding.

Resonance

A film by Raquel Salvatella dePrada, Jonathan Henderson and Merrill Shatzman

Inspired by the aridest landscapes in southern Utah, those of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and the many contrasts these landscapes present, this experimental film, looks at the sacred qualities and fragility of our environment. It depicts geologic space with a focus on how wind, water and human activity carve, hone and alter its surface.

LandEscape

A short film and installation by Raquel Salvatella and Merrill Shatzman

LandEscapes, draws upon elements from the landscape (inspired from Escalante and Bear’s Ears National Monuments in Utah), that portray beauty in a natural environment sculpted by wind, water and time. These Utah locations were specifically chosen to show how climatic, geological and weather conditions are now further exploited and treated by capitalism, industrial exploitation, pollution and politics: Bear’s Ears, an Indigenous American holy site, has been reduce in size in order to accommodate oil production and drilling on its sacred lands. LandEscapes is a collaborative project that portrays the impact of this destruction using my prints, digital drawing and remnant from laser cutting and animation created by Raquel Savatella de Prada.

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A group of water lilies floating on top of the water.

A blurry photo of leaves floating on water.

A blurry picture of some different colors and shapes

A close up of the camouflage pattern on a surface.

ARTPOEM

An Animated Film by Deborah Pope, Raquel Savatella and Merrill Shatzman

ARTPOEM, (2008-2010) is a multi-media collaborative project created by Raquel Salvatella de Prada (animator), Department of Art, Art History and Visual Stud-
ies, Deborah Pope (poet), Department of English and me. Our idea for the project played with the multiple ways words and images can digitally interact, constructing, and deconstructing signs, as individual words, and lines refract, rearrange, and redirect themselves into new words, and sentences, and images.

ARTPOEM as an animation showed how art and text could function interactively, moving beyond the traditional models of words merely paralleling images or static illustrations. The project aspired to simultaneously enact, and celebrate the essence, and process of creation itself.