Humanistic ideas move me as an artist. Filtering worldly existence through aesthetic practice, I am driven by an urge to comment on human experience, to project outwards that which is essential, to stand up for justice, to remember the victims and uplift the living. I believe the powerful language of art can transform entropy into harmony. Its unique rhetoric does not rely on literal interpretation of reality, but rather on an intangible essence that enables humans to understand art, music, and each other, beyond their own culture. Art is a window out of the mundane Newtonian world into the quantum reality of life pulsing in and out, into the integral yet unknown space of all possibilities.
Working with recognizable images within illusionistic 3D, I feel a part of the Surrealist tradition. I am drawn to its associative symbolism, mixed in with a sizable doze of subtle humor, unimposing, and open for interpretation. With every call to create, I advance explorations into territories of acting, gesture, space, texture and color.
Art that influences my world delivers a higher degree of understanding of matter, expressive of its most essential state, beyond physical form and earthly time. Such is the language of experimental and physical theater (James Thierree, Dimitris Papaioannou, Tadashi Suzuki) as well as Butoh, where through the instrument of a human body deepest revelations are communicated via abstract expression (Saburo Teshigawara, Sankai Juku, Eiko and Koma). Enamored with animating a thinking being in space, I focus on investigating how consciousness communicates through even a slightest change in pose or attitude. Fazes of movement are assembly components of feelings. Manufacturing them gesture by gesture I slow down time, meditating on the elasticity of temporal flow that delivers the message on the screen with precise speed.
A constant search for new forms to synthesize thoughts and feelings into a novel aesthetic consciousness, prompts an ongoing experimentation with animatable materials. I find emotional expressivity in the tactility of direct animation techniques, such as sand, paint, clay and light. Mixed in various combinations for each new project they guide my visual language. With or without descriptive connotations, palpable texture and color carry a capacity to be synesthetically 'heard' or 'felt', allowing each image-frame to be experienced as raw, fresh, and spontaneous. - every finger print and brush stroke vibrating with uninhibited emotion.
In my acquired ability to materialize visions I stand on the shoulders of all the artists whose daring inquiry left me feeling deeply moved. I am greatly influenced by such masters of painting as Mati Klarwein, Marlene Dumah, Kazuo Shiraga; experimental film work of Len Lye, William Kentridge, Caroline Leaf, Igor Kovalyov and Koji Yamamura, to name a few. But above all I am grateful to influential artists who mentored me: Jules Engel, Caroline Leaf, Cornelius Cole the III, Suzan Pitt, Amy Kravitz, Raymond Krumme and Leo Hobaica for their personal art, an unconventional point of view, guidenance and humor.
"Our life - it is a tale without a plot and without a hero, made out of emptiness and glass, out of the ardent bubble of individual deviations'' - Osip Mandelstam
Masha Vasilkovsky is an Experimental Animation Artist, internationally known for her animated films, made in direct techniques, ‘Fur and Feathers’ (2000) and ‘Eyes of the Azure’ (2016). Her films screened at Pompidou Museum, Annecy Animation Festival, and Museum of Modern Art New York, among other venues. Masha’s animation is featured in such productions as, "Il Doctor", Suzan Pitt (2005) and "Lo Azul Del Cielo", Juan Uribe (2012). In 2012 Masha co-founded Lumen Animae, an Amity of Creative Partnerships, presenting work at US Open, Sundance, and Tribeca Film Festivals, National TV of China, and other venues. Masha has directed and created over 25 productions, such as: ‘Mysterium Georgicus’, animated installation, permanent exhibit, Virginia (2017) and 'Ashe '68’, VR Sand animation, Emmy nomination (2019). Since 2014, at College of the Canyons, Masha brought together Holocaust survivors and students to create animated documentaries based on stories of survival, such as: 'My Angel of God’ (2019) and 'The Promise’ (2018). Masha holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design (1995) and an MFA in Experimental Animation from CalArts (1998). Masha teaches animation production at CalArts since 2007.
