Cinematic Voices
Maureen Selwood In Person
“Tonight’s selection of films, excerpts, and other images will chart my transition from drawn animation and film footage to encompass performance and physical theater. I have been thinking about why my work has shifted profoundly away from the animated short. The title for this evening is suggestive of how my work draws upon work that is self reflective, poised between narrative and disclosure. I will speak about how psychoanalysis enabled me to delve deeply into drawing and the animation process using them as a language to uncover the veiled significance of autobiographical content.
Another shift in my work has been to explore roots of the Irish Diaspora and the marking of refugees, then and now. My new work is leaning increasingly towards combinations of practices including collaboration.” – Maureen Selwood
About
Known for developing a pictographic language of body gestures and motion, Selwood imbues her images with qualities of the mental processes of life, so that they move in ways that reflect how thought employs mutability and the human psyche. Rooted aesthetically in stream-of-consciousness, film noir, dada and surrealism, Maureen’s images often reference mythology, poetry and art history. Her themes are universal, dealing with catastrophe, displacement, history and the imaginary.
Maureen Selwood is the recipient of awards from: John Solomon Guggenheim Foundation; Center for Cultural Innovation (Los Angeles); C.O.L.A. Individual Artists Fellowship (LA); New York State Council on the Arts; The Jerome Foundation; The American Film Institute. She has had artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony and ARTELUKU (Spain), and was the first American animator to receive the Rome Prize in Visual Arts from the American Academy in Rome.
Maureen has been on the faculty of the CalArts Experimental Animation Program since 1991, having served as Program Director and Associate Program Director for several years and now is faculty.
Program, Themes, Films and Excerpts:
Cocteau, Verdi, the Beatles: Odalisque (1980)
Adaptation, “Blue Rider Group”, Loss: The Rug (1985)
A Half-Formed Girl: Flying Circus: An Imagined Memoir (1995)
Cars, Sex, Love: Hail Mary (1998)
Goddard, Fellini, Anyone Can Draw!: Mistaken Identity (2001)
Niagara Falls...Machines, Elegy: A Modern Convenience (2012)
Rome, Refugees, War: As You Desire Me (2009)
Gender, Hallucinations, Transparency: 29 Cross Examinations (2015)
Resistance, Interior Truths, Protest: Sounding the Note of A (2015)
“Rather than working with noir characters, however, Selwood instead grappled with notions of dislocation, grief and loss, and created what she calls "time-based poems." The resulting project is indeed akin to poetry, in its piercing sadness that is at once palpable and ephemeral. How do these animated poems function?” - Holly Willis
“It is so rare to see a really thoughtful, complex multi-screen environment ... made me feel good all day! You got the perfect balance between the very real photographic space and the flat, vivid colors of the animation . . .and the score as well. But I think the best part was the interesting unpredictability of the way the imagery of the three screens relate to one another.” - Pat O’Neill
“The whole display, along with its ensuing legal drama, engrossed Selwood, who was intrigued not just by the performance, but by the sight of a group of young women thrashing about before the church's ornate reredos, delivering their ‘punk prayer.’” - Carolina A. Miranda
“Selwood has created a series of drawings and sculptural works that not only expand on the essential dialogue of women’s work, but also amplifies our own imaginative relationship to it.”- Eve Wood