Meek
Poem by Harry Martinson
Film by Ana Perez Lopez
Voice by Johnny Carlson

Oloström is a municipality in Sweden where Ana Perez Lopez did an artist-in-residency. Much like any town or area it boasts of generations that chose to stay, thus preserving its culture—unfortunately not without sacrifice. This is the focus of the video poem Meek.

Oloström could be anywhere. I would compare it to Pittsburgh, but I assume it’s much more visually appealing. This is my guess. I would like to think that Lopez is trying to convince us that there is an aspect which is intriguing, even though it has succumbed to the modern age. All in all I think her interpretation of the poem is dead on. It sheds a light on how modernization has made life in Oloström mundane. “But Oloström grew with a factory, a building where everything from pots, bullets and cars can be made.” (A quote from her Vimeo description.)

Ana chose to animate Meek using a cut paper/wood block style. It’s monochromatic, blue and white, scratchy, and the entire look lends itself to simple computer and/or traditional animation. I suppose the sheet music floating in the background is the same we hear in the video poem. It’s a nice design element, but since I don’t read music, for me it remains a mystery. I’ll take her word for it because it is graphically uncomplicated, which reinforces the message, thereby making Meek a very powerful work of art.

Visit Ana Perez Lopez at Vimeo.

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Cheryl Gross

Brooklyn native Cheryl Gross is an illustrator, painter, writer and motion graphic artist living and working in the New York/New Jersey area. She is a professor at Pratt Institute.

Cheryl’s work has appeared in numerous films, TV shows, publications, and graces the walls of many corporate and museum collections including: Zebra Poetry Film Festival, Berlin, New York Times, Riverside Museum, Riverside, Ca., The Museum of The City of New York, Mississippi Museum of Art, Laforet Harajuku Museum, Tokyo, Japan, Artist-In-Residency, Kunstlerhaus, Saarbruken, Germany. Finalist Elizabeth Hulings Foundation, 2014, Artist-In-Residency Program, Dilsberg, Germany, 2015, four-time recipient Eileen Kaminsky Family Foundation Residency, Jersey City, 2018-2020, Art Fair 14c 2021-2023, Competition Winner, 2015 Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Festival, Cork, Ireland.
“The work, metaphorically travels through two different forms of representation: abstract and realism, thereby creating a narrative that embraces a socio-political point of view. My narrative follows my childhood fantasies, which focuses on lifestyles that are usually viewed as male dominated.”

www.cherylgross.net/

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