Artist’s Statement
I like to work with found places, found history, and found stories via experimental film and mixed-media photography. My artwork is an attempt to explore ideas and alternative histories that hide beneath the surface of an image or a place.
I am interested in derelict buildings - structures built by and for people, but left to the wind, ghosts, and incremental decay. I am particularly intrigued by abandoned asylums and hospitals, because institutional dynamics seem to leave a resonant imprint on discarded places. Every layer of paint peeling off of a wall seems to release a memory or a whisper of something buried and forgotten.
My interest in such places expresses itself in various forms:
- Film has an immersive and malleable capacity to subvert familiar perception of time - as well as to reveal rhythms that are embedded in architecture and texture.
- Photography stops time, and preserves the observation of a resonant moment reflected in time.
- My Graphic Novel project is photographed and staged like a movie, but is presented as a collage of stills. It is an intentionally artificial attempt to find ‘tales’ in discarded objects, documents, and places.
Biography
Bryan grew up near Allentown Pennsylvania, but moved to Boston in 1994 to work as a commercial animation director at Olive Jar Studios, where he specialized in mixed-media and stop-motion animation. His work has won many awards at film and television festivals worldwide. Since Olive Jar’s closing in 2001, Bryan formed an independent film & animation company, Handcranked Productions, with long-time collaborator Jeff Sias. In addition to working commercially, Bryan also teaches courses in Animation and Experimental Film at Rhode Island School of Design, and he is a Directing Member of Ars Subterranea, a New York based arts society dedicated to the “creative preservation” of abandoned structures. Along with Daniel Sousa, Jeff Sias, and Jake Mahaffy, Bryan is one of the founding members of Handcranked Film Projects, a Bosotn-based art & film collaborative.
