ArtBabble: Martha Colburn

Martha Colburn Cuts the Boring Parts Out

Art21 — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:08:54 +0000

Series:

New York Close Up

Institution:

Art21

How does an artist develop a personal style? In this film, artist Martha Colburn traces the evolution of her work, from her first found-footage film to subsequent hand-painted and stop-motion animations. Inspired by Baltimore’s experimental filmmaking community, Colburn describes how her earliest films were assembled from audio-visual cast offs found in the city’s surplus dump. After making films without using a camera, Colburn describes how she started to shoot her own original paintings and collages.

Martha Colburn & the Musicians, LIVE!

Art21 — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:42:48 +0000

Series:

New York Close Up

Institution:

Art21

How does an artist transform a solitary practice into a communal experience? In this film, artist Martha Colburn leads a group of musicians in a series of live performances to her animated films at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. The raucous energy of the musical accompaniment to Colburn’s work—itself intensely kinetic and colorful, often depicting historically-inspired scenes of aggression and violence—belies the time-consuming and meticulous process by which the artist creates her stop-motion films.