Jamie Wolfe
A still image from Wolfe’s short, Eclipsed
Grotesque is a dirty word but I’m pretty sure Jamie Wolfe would take it as a compliment. Wolfe is an animator living in Los Angeles and she has a knack for creating works that are equal parts beautiful and unsettling. Something about her art connects with the way I think; often I don’t understand my brain or the way it strings thoughts and images together. A word used on her website in relation to her animations is volcanic and it is one that speaks to the way they are presented as well as the way they make you feel. Sometimes things happen before you get a chance to understand why and the animations reflect this. The movement in them plays with a certain manic energy that much of art tries to conceal. It is raw and yet it is carefully composed. Wolfe’s works are discombobulated while retaining full control, emotionally distinct even when narratively abstract, something frontier-striding which is soaked in the familiar.
One of my favorite animations she has done is the music video for “Cellular,” off of the King Krule album, Man Alive. The plot is somewhat clear. It follows a man walking through a field of telephone poles as he comes across a woman who is bouncing on the telephone wires. She uses them like an acrobat walking a tightrope, bouncing on them like elastic ropes with no concern for the electricity they carry inside them. For a reason that is unknown to us, he feels beckoned by the experience she is having. After staring at her for a while, he starts to climb the poles in order to join her, scurrying across the wires until he reaches her. Once close, she grabs one of the wires in a grand stunt and bites it, sending shocks through the wires and into both of their bodies. The man falls, his body twitching. The background and the features of the characters descend into fragmented chaos as individual parts of their faces flash across the screen in a strobe-like fashion. We see a few frames of the man staring forward, his feet on the ground, red glasses now missing.
The inspiration from artists like Picasso is evident. Sometimes a frame feels as though it has been cut up into puzzle pieces and put back together in a new way. But it is so much more internal, focusing on the way that physical experience is impacted by emotional state. Wolfe has a talent for making you walk away with the thought, “what just happened?” Perhaps you’ll find yourself watching again trying to figure it out.
