Mary Beams (born March 30, 1945) [1] is an American artist and animator, known for her experimentation with animation in the 1970s, which produced "pioneering feminist" [2] work that is considered a "type of personal filmmaking all their own." [3]
Mary Beams (born March 30, 1945) [1] is an American artist and animator, known for her experimentation with animation in the 1970s, which produced "pioneering feminist" [2] work that is considered a "type of personal filmmaking all their own." [3]
Beams was born in Chicago, March 30, 1945. After studying painting and graphics at Miami University, Beams moved to the Boston area, where she took her M.A. in filmmaking at Boston University, [4] then went on to study animation at Harvard. [5] Beams worked as a teaching assistant at Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.
Mary Beams's work in animation includes experiments in motion via minimalist Super 8 and 16mm rotoscoping, and hybrids of hand-rubbed animation and live action. Through film, Beams conveys "a worldview centered around gentleness and delight in the beauty of being alive." [3] Her themes include "memory, erotic fantasy and feminism." [6]
Beams became known as the creator of the Boston MBTA Green Line murals. [7] [8] She had created 19 murals for the city's Government Center station in 1978. The panels, approximately 130 linear feet in length, depicted the exterior of a subway train, with the train riders visible through the train's windows. Intended as a temporary installation, the murals remained in place for three decades. [9] Describing the imagery, Beams said "I'd put anything I felt like putting, so in one window you might see giant hands holding giant newspapers, and then in the next you might see a group of people playing with a dog."
When they were removed in 2015 during an overhaul of the station, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority made efforts to contact her and return the paintings. She rejected their offer, and suggested that the panels be put up for public auction, to generate more art-devoted funds for the MBTA. [8] The plywood panels, painted with Benjamin Moore paints, were auctioned separately, raising $65,000 for a replacement artwork in enameled porcelain. [10]
By the 1990s Beams had "largely abandoned the art world and destroyed her archive without regret." "It was incredibly freeing," Beams is quoted as saying. [9]
Beams's freedom did not last long. The time-specific originality of Beams' animated work, constructed by hand in the pre-computer age of animation, and often on 4 × 6" index cards, [3] has become more fully appreciated with the passage of time. Her films now appear in regular screenings at major art institutions in North America and Europe, including the Tate Modern and MoMA, which holds a large store of Beams' work in its permanent collection. [11]
Currently resident in Grand Marais, Minnesota, Beams has become known in recent years as a maker of pies, and is part-owner of the Pie Place Café. [8]
Whale Songs (1979)
School in the Sky (c. 1979)
Paul Revere Is Here (1976)
Rain Seeds (1976)
Going Home Sketchbook (1975)
Seed Reel No. 1 (1975)
Piano Rub (1975)
Solo Film (1975)
The Tub (1972)
Quilt Film (n.d.)
The term independent animation refers to animated shorts, web series, and feature films produced outside a major national animation industry.
Drawn-on-film animation, also known as direct animation or animation without camera, is an animation technique where footage is produced by creating the images directly on film stock, as opposed to any other form of animation where the images or objects are photographed frame by frame with an animation camera.
Government Center station is an MBTA subway station in Boston, Massachusetts. It is located at the intersection of Tremont, Court and Cambridge Streets in the Government Center area. It is a transfer point between the light rail Green Line and the rapid transit Blue Line. With the Green Line platform having opened in 1898, the station is the third-oldest operating subway station in the MBTA system; only Park Street and Boylston are older. The station previously served Scollay Square before its demolition for the creation of Boston City Hall Plaza.
Anderson Regional Transportation Center (RTC) (noted on MBTA schedules and maps as Anderson/Woburn, and on Amtrak schedules and maps as Woburn–Anderson) is a train and bus station located at 100 Atlantic Avenue, off Commerce Way, in Woburn, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. It can be accessed from Exit 30 off Interstate 93 or Exit 54 (Washington Street) from southbound Interstate 95/Route 128.
John Kirkham Hubley was an American animated film director, art director, producer, and writer known for his work with the United Productions of America (UPA) and his own independent studio, Storyboard, Inc.. A pioneer and innovator in the American animation industry, Hubley pushed for more visually and emotionally complex films than those being produced by contemporaries like the Walt Disney Company and Warner Brothers Animation. He and his second wife, Faith Hubley, who he worked alongside from 1953 onward, were nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning three.
Caroline Leaf is a Canadian-American filmmaker, animator, director, tutor and artist. She has produced numerous short animated films and her work has been recognized worldwide. She is best known as one of the pioneering filmmakers at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). She worked at the NFB from 1972 to 1991. During that time, she created the sand animation and paint-on-glass animation techniques. She also tried new hands-on techniques with 70mm IMAX film. Her work is often representational of Canadian culture and is narrative based. Leaf now lives in London UK and is a tutor at The National Film and Television School. She maintains a studio in London working in oils and on paper and does landscape drawing with iPad.
Faith Hubley was an American animator, known for her experimental work both in collaboration with her husband John Hubley, and on her own following her husband's death.
Robert Grosvenor Gardner was an American academic, anthropologist, and documentary filmmaker who was the Director of the Film Study Center at Harvard University from 1956 to 1997. He is known for his work in the field of visual anthropology and films like the National Film Registry inductee Dead Birds and Forest of Bliss. In 2011, a retrospective of his work was held at Film Forum, New York.
Joanna Priestley is an American contemporary film director, producer, animator and teacher. Her films are in the collections of the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Priestley has had retrospectives at the British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art and Hiroshima International Animation Festival in Japan. Bill Plympton calls her the "Queen of independent animation". Priestley lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
Mary Lucier is an American visual artist and pioneer in video art. Concentrating primarily on video and installation since 1973, she has produced numerous multiple- and single-channel pieces that have had a significant impact on the medium.
Peggy Ahwesh is an American experimental filmmaker and video artist. She received her B.F.A. at Antioch College. A bricoleur who has created both narrative works and documentaries, some projects are scripted and others incorporate improvised performance. She makes use of sync sound, found footage, digital animation, and Pixelvision video. Her work is primarily an investigation of cultural identity and the role of the subject in various genres. Her interests include genre; women, sexuality and feminism; reenactment; and artists' books. Her works have been shown worldwide, including in San Francisco, New York, Barcelona, London, Toronto, Rotterdam, and Créteil, France. Starting in 1990, she has taught at Bard College as a Professor of Film and Electronic Arts. Her teaching interests include: experimental media, history of the non-fiction film, and women in film.
Irving Kriesberg was an American painter, sculptor, educator, author, and filmmaker, whose work combined elements of Abstract Expressionism with representational human, animal, and humanoid forms. Because Kriesberg blended formalist elements with figurative forms he is often considered to be a Figurative Expressionist.
Candyjam is a 1988 7 minute 35mm short animated film animated collaboration by ten animators from four countries produced and directed by Joanna Priestley and Joan C. Gratz. The animation was made with clay painting, drawings, puppets and object animation.
Emily Hubley is an American filmmaker and animator.
Lilli Carré is an American interdisciplinary artist currently based in Los Angeles, working in experimental animation, ceramics, print, and textile. She is co-director of the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation and is represented by contemporary art gallery Western Exhibitions. She currently teaches in the Experimental Animation department at the California Institute of the Arts
Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis are a Canadian animation duo. On January 24, 2012, they received their second Oscar nomination, for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animated short film, Wild Life (2011). With their latest film, The Flying Sailor, they received several nominations and awards, including for the Best Canadian Film at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, and on January 24, 2023, they received a nomination for the 95th Academy Awards under the category Best Animated Short Film.
Yale Union was a nonprofit contemporary art center in southeast Portland, Oregon, United States. Located in the Yale Union Laundry Building built in 1908, the center was founded in 2008. In 2020, the organization announced it would transfer the rights of its building to the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF). It dissolved the nonprofit after wrapping up its program in 2021 and completing the building and land transfer. The space is now the Center for Native Arts and Cultures.
The Arlington International Film Festival (AIFF) is an annual nonprofit film festival dedicated to promoting and increasing multicultural awareness and showcases world cinema and independent films in their original language with English subtitles. Independent film producers, directors and actors within the US and abroad are invited to participate in engaging panel discussions and Q&A sessions after the screenings. Each year the festival greets more than 2,000 movie aficionados and shows about fifty films from all over the world with an impressive lineup of premieres. The Arlington International Film Festival also includes a year-round events such as poster contest competitions, pre-festival screenings and art exhibitions with local artists and performances by musicians, singers and dancers.
Deanna Morse is an independent American experimental filmmaker and media artist. Her work is included in collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
North Station is an underground MBTA subway station in Boston, Massachusetts. Served by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Green Line and Orange Line, it is connected to the North Station surface terminal used by MBTA Commuter Rail and Amtrak. The station is fully accessible.
