Animation in the House

The award-winning work of Colorado-based filmmaker Stacey Steers comprises thousands of handmade paper cuttings, collages and individually painted drawings. It can take Steers years to create the artwork seen in her animated films, which average about eight individual images per second of animation. And now, in an even more painstaking and detail-oriented feat of artistry, Steers has created an installation piece to highlight her dark, surreal 2011 flick, Night Hunter.

Night Hunter is a provocative, weird and beautiful piece of animated cinema that is aesthetically similar to Salvador Dali’s famous Un Chien Andalou, though not as disturbing. Silent film star Lillian Gish is appropriated and pulled through a series of dreamlike events that drip with cryptic imagery — corn stalks growing from dresser drawers, plates of writhing earthworms, blood, moths, zero dialogue — Steer’s installation does her film justice.

The “Night Hunter House” is a creepy-looking, Victorian-style dollhouse with ten separate rooms. Each little room is furnished, and contains objects related to Steers’ eerie and bizarre movie — things like bird eggs and moth specimens accompany tiny TV screens broadcasting clips from Night Hunter. The film in its entirety will also be shown in the new Artist Project Space gallery at the Schnitzer, which is where the Night Hunter House can be experienced.

This exhibit will run through June 19, at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; $5, $3 senior, 18 and under FREE.

A Note From the Publisher

Dear Readers,

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