Joanna Priestley has produced, directed and animated 27 award winning films about subjects dear to her heart: relationships, abstraction, plants, magic, menopause and prison. She has had retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw, Poland), American Cinematheque (Los Angeles, USA), Stuttgart Animation Festival (Stuttgart, Germany) and REDCAT (Los Angeles, USA) and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, the MacDowell Colony, Fundación Valparaíso and Creative Capital. Priestley teaches animation at the Art Institute of Portland and runs an internship program. She was founding president of ASIFA Northwest and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts. Her films are available on DVD from www.primopix.com.
“I love Joanna’s films. They’re brilliant, inventive and amazing. She’s the queen of independent animation.”—Bill Plympton
Section One
Utopia Parkway (1997, 5 min., drawings on paper, objects and replacement animation). Directed, produced and animated by Joanna Priestley. Sound design and music by Jaime Haggerty. Edited by Chris Willging and Joanna Priestley. Funding provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Utopia Parkway was inspired by the box sculptures by Joseph Cornell, who lived in the same house on Utopia Parkway in Queens, New York, nearly all of his life.
Dew Line (2005, 5 min., 2D computer animation)
Directed, produced and animated by Joanna Priestley. Sound designed and produced by Jaime Haggerty. Supported by a grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council. “A rich abstract tapestry of botanical and biomorphic forms. Priestley’s first Flash animation is a striking continuation of her fluid playful style.” -Bill Foster, Northwest Film Center
Eye Liner (2010, 4 min., 2D computer animation)
Directed, produced and animated by Joanna Priestley. Sound designed and produced by Seth Norman. Supported by the Regional Arts and Culture Council. “Our capacity for facial recognition in the most basic forms is considered through this whimsical, patterned animation.” -Andrea Grover, NW Filmmakers’ Festival Juror
Split Ends (2013, 3.5 min., 2D computer animation)
Directed, produced and animated by Joanna Priestley. Sound designed and produced by Seth Norman. Without relying on pop culture reference points, the delicate patterns of Split Ends stimulate a collective memory of youthful self-hypnosis and visual absorption. Inspired by North American wrapping papers from the 1960’s and French and English wallpapers from the early 1900s. Supported by the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
Bottle Neck (2015, 3 min., 2D computer animation)
Directed, produced and animated by Joanna Priestley. Sound designed and produced by Seth Norman. Title design and compositing by Brian Kinkley. Special thanks to Petit Pattern Books. A luminous crush of still life silhouettes, abstract shapes and complex, interlocking patterns, Bottle Neck renovates the commonplace objects of a classical painting genre in a modern setting. Bottle Neck is the final film in the Eye Liner Trilogy that includes Split Ends (2013) and Eye Liner (2011).
Section Two
Pro and Con (1993, 9 min., object and cel animation, puppets, drawings and clay painting)
Directed, produced and animated by Joanna Priestley and Joan Gratz. Sound produced by Lance Limbocker and Chel White. Music by Chel White. Narrated by Lt. Janice Inman and Allen Nause. “Con” written by Jeff Green. Commissioned through the Metropolitan Arts Commission’s Percent for Art Program. Pro and Con looks at the U.S. prison system through the eyes of a female, African American corrections officer and a white, male inmate. The film includes self-portraits that were drawn by inmates at the Oregon State Penitentiary and contraband weapons and crafts that were confiscated from inmates.
Dear Pluto (2012, 4 min., 2D computer animation)
Directed, produced and animated by Joanna Priestley. Written and narrated by Taylor Mali. Sound Design by Normand Roger and Pierre Yves Drapeau. Music by Pierre Yves Drapeau with Denis Chartrand and Normand Roger. “Dear Pluto, you will always be a planet in my Solar System!” A tribute to everyone’s favorite planetoid, from the poem “Pizza” by Taylor Mali. Animated with Maya, 3-D Studio Max and Flash.
Missed Aches (2009, 4 minutes, 2D computer animation) Directed, produced and animated by Joanna Priestley. Written and narrated by Taylor Mali. Sound Design by Normand Roger and Pierre Yves Drapeau. Music by Pierre Yves Drapeau with Denis Chartrand and Normand Roger. Text Animation by Brian Kinkley. Character design by Don Flores. Storyboards by Dan Schaeffer. Supported by the Regional Arts and Culture Council and the Caldera Institute.
Missed Aches is about proofreading and the indiscriminate use of spellcheck. It combines animated characters with moving text. It was written and narrated by poet Taylor Mali, who led teams to four championships in the National Poetry Slam (USA). Missed Aches was made with Adobe Flash and After Effects.