Patch-work quilts and blankets become an abstract commentary on familiar history, fashion through time, and domestic aesthetics and politics. Patterns as an infinite source of plastic joy and meaning…
Robert Delany: Your films are so rich with varied texture and color. What led you to start using everyday materials to create such lively works, and how does abstraction in particular bring out the beauty of everyday objects?
Jodie Mack: For me in the sort of lineage of things, it was really all about access and availability of materials. Some of the first things I made were with pieces of colored acetate purchased at an office supply store. The sheets took me through years of filmmaking because I was working so small, and always from the very beginning I have treated filmmaking and animation with a sense of economy. Because you never want to do anything twice if you don’t have to. Some of the beauty of cutting into things is that you will reveal other shapes that you then become inspired to use. I started out with accessible materials and really sourced and extracted as much as I could out of my own home, then moved towards ideas of institutional collections in later works like The Grand Bizarre (2018) or Hoarders Without Borders (2018), something that’s from a mineralogical and geological museum. So it sort of changed, but it’s definitely always like, ‘What is around me?’
Robert Delany1
- 1Robert Delany, “Stained Glass Daydreams: An Interview With Jodie Mack,” Split Tooth Media, 14 January 2021.
