Overview

Starting in the late 1930s, illustrator and experimental animator Douglass Crockwell created a series of short abstract animated films at his home in Glen Falls, New York. The films offered Crockwell a chance to experiment with various unorthodox animation techniques such as adding and removing non-drying paint on glass frame-by-frame, squeezing paint between two sheets of glass, and finger painting. The individual films created over a nine-year period were then stitched together for presentation, forming a nonsensical relationship that only highlights the abstract qualities of the images. —Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance