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The lights dim at the Maya Stendhal Gallery and a number of short ani-
mated films flood the screen.
Jeff Scher’s films unfold, often revealing not one but layers of narratives
hidden like jewels one under the other, creating an intervention or a pause
between the crisis of modern life and the fear that often accompanies and
overwhelms the present. They speak of a future to come and a present that
is livable. In their unpredictability they invite a very personal interpreta-
tion. His work is neither precious nor sweetly distracting nor sentimental;
rather, a sensual and hopeful quality pervades his work. When I see it I
find I am smiling in recognition of comfort, of feeling good in my skin.
His are narratives that our physical beings can make sense of.
Although well respected and known in his field, Scher remains some-
what removed from the art world at large. But it is a time of critical mass
for him. He has a solo exhibit opening September 8 at the Maya Stendhal
Gallery and a screening of one of his films at the Museum of Modern Art,
where his work is permanently archived. He is a visual poet, painter, ani-
mator, and filmmaker whose extraordinary talent lies in creating narratives
that reaffirm wholeness and a basic humanity. Rather than retelling famil-
iar existential themes of angst, despair, and brokenness, his stories leave a
visceral aftertaste, a reminder of some faith in life, in the story, which his
work shows is not over yet. His take on the drama of life shares character-
istics close to the extraordinarily vibrant and colorful world of mythology,
suggesting the continuum of birth, life, and death, the movement of cre-
ation, Shiva in an unending dance celebrating the cycle of creation and
destruction. I’d say he’s a Fauvist in film.
His animations are composed from paintings and drawings in water-
color, pastels, colored pencils, and collages of found materials—postcards,
newspapers, and old film stock—that he paints over and photographs to
form a narrative. He is equally preoccupied with the apparatus and the
underlying technology of these media. Using rotoscopes and thauma-
tropes, he further alters and defines how the story is told, merging
hand-drawn processes with technical issues. Scher’s fascination and pleas-
ure in creating is obvious. His films explode in saturated color and images
that force the eye to work in ways it is usually not challenged to do.
Artist Jeff Scher has a busy fall with a major show
of his new films and paintings at the Maya Stendhal
Gallery in Chelsea and a film showing at New York's
Museum of Modern Art.

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Kathryn Simon: I just noticed this contraption behind you, which I suspect has
a function?
Jeff Scher: Which one?
That painted flying object.
That’s my rotoscope.[It] was used by the Fleischer brothers in the ’20s as
a way to get realistic drawings of people and objects and animation. There
were two brothers, the Fleischer guys. They invented Popeye—ah, a lot of
really great people.
Didn’t they do the silent cartoons to music?
Yeah, they began in silent films—Betty Boop and Koko the Clown. Mostly
rotoscope and it’s also mostly silent… So yeah, that is what they did. They
went up on their tenement on the Lower East Side and Dave dressed in a
clown suit and Max filmed it. Then they got the film back and they pro-
jected it frame by frame back onto the paper and they used that as a
template. What they had was this sequence of motion that was suddenly
very realistic, more alive. It’s a technique used in animation a lot since.
Disney used it in the golden days all the time. The difference between
when you invent a character completely and invent all the motions by
drawing freehand, and then creating cycles and sequences of images to cre-
ate the illusion of motion, it’s called character animation. Rotoscoping is
when it’s based on live action, so they are different [processes and tech-
niques] that you can blend.
The piece you just showed me, “Trixie,” [an animated film for his upcoming
show]—what is that based on?
It’s all rotoscope. It’s about a third that I shot and then the rest is stock
footage from various odd sources
That you’ve repainted?
Yeah, there is none of the original image left. It’s always treated as a template
and it’s completely varied really. I sort of extract the continuity of form.
Hmm…maybe because the frames are all hand-painted, it allows me to absorb each
image differently, and because the sequence of the narrative is not predictable I am
forced to pay more attention so I always find I have this grin on my face as I watch
your work.
I always like to make it consistently a little too much. So it’s always like
there is a happy guilt about them.
Let’s return to your narratives for a moment. There is something that you do when
you go from one thing to the next, like in “Garden of Regrets.” There is the burning
house, then the couple kissing, then they break up, then there is newspaper.

4. Actually it’s a house that’s being demolished, a chateau. It was filmed as it
was being blown up, demolished by the Nazi’s, from World War II footage.
I don’t remember the sequence exactly but I used it three times. There is a
shot of a guy looking and a shot of a woman looking back, and there is that
sort of spark, opening, and the building de-demolishes and it leaps back to
life, so in a sense using the building as a metaphor for demolished dreams
or habitat or expectation, or desires of life. In its stone and concrete con-
text. Coming and going. The building can be seen demolished because you
see it as it once existed and then you see it in this after-state, so you are see-
ing time in its most dramatic application. There used to be a building and
now there is a pile of dust.
And also there is this plasticity of time in cinema in the sense that time
becomes malleable. Before movies, people had never seen this, where time
runs forward and backward, at different speeds…something we totally take
for granted now…it could make the ghosts dance.
It seems that “Garden of Regrets” is metaphorical as well as literal.The couple seems
to be fighting and then coming back together.That’s what I remember. Maybe I made
it all up.
No, no, there is an illusion of narrative in that film. I made it during…get-
ting a divorce. I went through a string of odd relationships and they are all
flavors and they are all…you know, one of the alternate titles was “Garden
of Divorce.” But I thought “Regrets” was more inclusive. I didn’t want it to
be that specific. So really it allowed me to include more things, in that there
is a lot of irony in that [title] also.
A metaphor. I like that “Regrets” indicates something given and taken away,
whether it’s through recall or through actuality but it’s never the divorce, which
is a finality.
There is definitely a subliminal element also in terms of the structure of it,
too. When I make the images, when I’m choosing what to rotoscope, what
to film, what’s being painted, it’s almost always what interests me visually
rather than narratively.
I feel like it’s the visuals that are pulling that.
Yeah, very much, so there is no game plan in front, there is no script or sto-
ryboard, ever. It’s just one shot interests me, then another shot interests
me, and they will be completely disconnected and I will put them into the
same big box. And after about six months or so, I will pull them out and
arrange them and edit them like film. I’ll have the first frame and the last
frame of every sequence and I can move them around. I can put them side
by side, so I can edit the movie on the floor.
Do you feel the work that you do is much more of a parallel to life as we live it than
when you go to the movies and you see sequence?
Sure.
In “Milk of Amnesia” that title refers much more to the way the brain catalogs
events. I mean narrative is completely artificial; that’s why it’s so appealing. It’s so
amazing—beginnings, middles, and ends—because life isn’t like that at all. It’s sort
of this omnipresent now and this omnivorous now that devours the future and spits
out the past and you cling to bits of the past that stick to your wings like pollen and
the future is just, you know, make some plans, ha, ha, ha.
Well said [laughter].
Just try to duck the incoming.
Very good, and just make as many intelligent choices as you can and try not
to hurt anybody.
But it is remarkable how, through the stories you create, I find this hope or faith in
an implicit wholeness. I walk out feeling there is something I just haven’t seen yet,
like there is more to the picture, you know?
That’s cool. That’s really lovely. I mean to be true maybe there is some kind
of ironic optimism that can’t help but percolate out of every frame.
What is your earliest memory?
My earliest memory is being where we lived in Stamford, Connecticut…in
this farmhouse with barn doors that had slits in them. I remember these
rays of light coming through the dust and seeing dust appear and disappear
in a slice of light that was three-dimensional coming across the room. And
I remember thinking how it felt, like you were floating in the air through
looking at this dust and thinking just how magical it was.
Isn’t that what you see when the movie reel finishes?
Yes, that is what it was, like a sculptural version of film grain.
Jeff Scher lives in New York with his wife, Bonnie Seigler, and their two sons,
Buster and Oscar. He teaches at the School of Visual Arts and is the recipient of
grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Jerome Foundation,
among others. His films have been shown internationally at film festivals, and on
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