Jodie Mack has some great initials. Jon Myers, James/Jahmal Mitchell, even Maggie Jones too. She’s also a wonderful filmmaker. She came through Portland and did a show at Grand Detour a few months back. Now that I live in Chicago, her ghost is all over town (she’s since moved to New Hampshire to teach at Dartmouth). She’s an experimental animator, which is to say she engages the single frame (I think that’s most reductive and open way to define animation) and she does so using a variety of unconventional techniques and toward unconventional ends (I think that’s a pretty reductive and open way to define experimental). What makes her work striking, in part, is her use of paper and film as her materials. Even watching them on vimeo, you’ll be able to get some sense of the materiality and physicality of the work. It’s also enormously clever without losing its emotional core. I very barely know Jodie, but her films seem heavily imbued by her personality, a certain intelligence and rigor that isn’t afraid of levity. More or less my favorite combination.

Here are the four films that comprise her Unsubscribe series. The whole thing is wonderful (and maybe there’ll be more coming soon? [JM- how are your google alerts? -JM]), but if you feel like pretending you have a time crunch beyond the universe expanding, my personal favorites are 1 for the mesmer and 4 for the ear/eye/buzz. Junk Mail has never looked so good, right, Jared Moran?