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Author: Jim Doran
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S.Ex no. 5
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Ok, Zoomer
Last winter, the Hamilton Gallery presented the Bearing Witness show online, not knowing how/when the pandemic was going to resolve.
Lucky for all, it will be in person this summer! I had submitted Pestilence Rides Out for the digital show. I’ve been collecting my thoughts and objects regarding this time in our lives, and decided to make another piece for the in person exhibit.
I’ve watched my daughters finish their respective school careers online. I’ve worked remotely for over a year. And attended many meetings on Webex, Google Meet, and Zoom.
A lot of these characters kept me company and/or otherwise occupied throughout the pandemic. I take my mask off to them, my good friends.
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Two Feet and More
I’ve been dying to show these giant drawings in public. So, when I saw the call for entry, I jumped in with… both feet!
Two Feet and More is a show at the Towson Art Collective of works 2′ and larger. It seemed doubly fitting that my work is larger than 2′, and is of 2 feet!
This is quality Dad humor, folks.
Each is approximately 3′ x 3′.
P.S. I was told this is “funny sexy.”
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Plasticland WIP
I started working on a project I’m calling PLASTICLAND. I am continuing to tell stories with my action figures.
While staying at my girlfriend’s house a few months back, I took a long walk. I found a blue plastic toy abandoned by the side of the road. I think that it was part of an infant’s car play-set. I was struck by both the loneliness of the seemingly useless object, and also the possibilities it offered. I decided to bring it home. One less chunk of plastic polluting our environment, right? It became the set for these little stories.
I made the following camera tests over two after work filming sessions in my backyard. I used my iPhone to capture the shots in Dragonframe. It worked well enough, and I love the portability of the phone. I’m having trouble exporting a quicktime file in Dragonframe, however. It’s choppy and slow. H.264/ACC works fine, so I suppose that will have to work for now. Dragonframe support said:
MP4 is much more compressed, and suited for playback. If you are outputting a really large (dimensionally, like 4K) Animation Codec movie, it might not play back in real time. That format is more intended to be used as an intermediary for editing.
For fun, I edited the two takes together. I’m approaching each scene as though my younger self were sitting in his childhood backyard playing with these objects. That’s really my only narrative principle. I made storyboards as a kid showing how I would animated scenes with my stuff, had I a working camera and film. I’m finding this as satisfying now as I would have as a boy. My intention is to use this footage as projection material for playing music. There’s a lot of boiling in this – my hands and other things.
As a bonus, Brood X has arrived. My yard is full with emerging cicadas. One fellow made an appearance in a few shots. They haven’t started singing yet. I can’t wait to record them. Here’s a bonus video I made for Instagram: