Experimental animator Jodie Mack creates handmade 16mm films that combine the formal techniques and structures of abstract, absolute animation with those of cinematic genres. Frequently made with collaged domestic materials, her work explores the relationship between fine-art abstraction and mass-produced, decorative imagery.

Mack recycles and revives found materials from everyday life, and the stroboscopic effect in her animation imparts a kinetic energy to things we may otherwise deem banal. By embracing ornamental patterns and materials such as textiles, costume jewelry, and construction paper, Mack engages with a larger reframing of art history to include artistic modes such as craft and folk art, which were historically marginalized due to their associations with femininity, domesticity, or utility.

Posthaste Perennial Pattern fuses synthetic floral fabrics in a stop-motion animation that pulsates as if capturing a garden in bloom within a single moment. Mack playfully subverts the association of these textiles with stable, quiet household settings and furniture through this frenzied presentation of patterns. The interplay between the imagined passive domestic interiors that the patterns were intended to decorate, the graphic, two-dimensional illustration of organic matter, and the technologically imposed chaos becomes further amplified on the electronic billboards of Times Square.

“This piece was inspired by the human impulse to build infinitely upgradable technologies to represent, re-present, and re-represent natural phenomena. Fascinated by modes of measurement, synthesis, and image-making, I concentrate here on a collection of fabrics in which floral patterns are created via various application techniques. Through non-sequential animation, the piece creates a soothing, euphoric, and exuberant all-over field. It creates a waltz of flowers, interrupting the grid-like quadrants of Times Square to grow through the cracks.

“The magic of animation often relies on delight and wonderment among audiences. The opportunity to create this sense of wonderment in a public setting is thrilling to me. Let the selfies begin! In our wounded world, amidst major humanitarian crises, I think the artist’s role becomes increasingly unclear. But, here in these midnight moments, this daily three-minute respite from commerce, we can trade advertisements for products for advertisements of pleasure. Here the work appears to the general public as an antidote to the ‘feeds’ which provide no nourishment, but instead create anxiety and alienation.”

- Jodie Mack

Jodie Mack created Posthaste Perennial Pattern in response to Miriam Schapiro's 1973–74 collage-painting, The Beauty of Summer. Schapiro, a pioneering feminist artist, championed and referenced women’s domestic arts and crafts in her work, and her approach to everyday material continues to inspire artists today. Posthaste Perennial Pattern is presented in partnership with the Museum of Arts and Design’s exhibition Surface/Depth: The Decorative After Miriam Schapiro (March 22–September 9, 2018), which brings together Schapiro’s work alongside that of nine contemporary artists, including Jodie Mack, who explore pattern and ornamentation as a language of abstraction tied to the personal and the political.

“Mack’s experimental animated films, known as ‘fabric flickers,’ in which textiles from plaids to paisleys come alive as pulsing abstractions, reflect the artist’s desire to unleash the kinetic energy in the everyday materials that surround us, as well as her unorthodox view of experimental film as being 'closer to folk art than fine art' for its use of pattern and collage.”

- Elissa Auther, Windgate Research and Collections Curator, Museum of Arts and Design