Artist Video: Behind the Grail

Jake Fried

Hand-drawn animation with ink on paper.
My work is typically made by destroying and reworking the same image over and over again for months to create a highly detailed, 1-minute mind-bending animation. But when I am traveling or away from the studio, I will work on flip-books to keep my hands busy and experiment with movement. I don't often publish the results, but when PROOF reached out about providing older work or work in an atypical style for Grails, I thought it would be fun to share one of my favorite flip-books.
Ball was hand-drawn on one pad of Post-It Notes while commuting by train and subway, I used a quarter to trace the circle on each page. I wanted to depict three types of movement all at once - a moving object, a moving light source, and a moving viewpoint or "camera” - while also exploring the expressive, painterly and distorted qualities made possible by drawing at a very small scale in a moving train car. When the flip-book was complete, I scanned each page to create the endlessly looping digital animation. To me, Ball is a meditation on the illusion of movement itself. An object in motion stays in motion. Always move forward.

Type	Open Edition
Total minted	17

16. Ball

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