WORK
This is an animation based on Samuel Adler's Sonata for Unaccompanied Flute, recorded by Bonita Boyd for Vox Classics. The animation was made for a program hosted by the New York Flute Club in 2021.
Samuel Adler’s Sonata includes variations on Brian Boru’s March. The animation was designed to weave together the shoreline and landscape of Clontarf (where Brian Boru fought his last battle) with typographic elements from the Book of Armagh and the Book of Leinster, which record both some of the agreements that brought Brian Boru to power, and the story of his defeat at Clontarf.
Whooper swans were also a source for imagery, since their migration routes can parallel the sea-routes taken by the Vikings who defeated Brian Boru. As I painted, I came to see these swans as almost mythical creatures whose movement peacefully foreshadowed the arc of Brian Boru's life; They felt reminiscent of the sense of post-anxious rest and satisfaction that accompanies the march variations in third movement of Adler's Sonata. In some ways the shapes of surviving Viking ships from the 10th and 11th century echo both the arcing necks of swans and the calligraphy in the book of Leinster, so these forms are woven together in the animation in ways that were inspired by the weaving lines of sound in the Sonata.
The imagery was created with a combination of watercolor, pastel, acrylic, and digital tools.
This video was made by compiling scans of paintings and splicing them together in a slow stop motion. It was created for a performance of the show Psychopomp by the FuturPointe dance company at Geva Theatre for the Rochester, NY Fringe Festival.
