I met Gunvor in the early 70’s at an annual country retreat for artists of the day. She had that 60’s look – long blond hair, mucho eye makeup and a Mumu. She bummed cigarettes from me while we sat and talked and drank wine all afternoon. I very much liked her company.
Years later, around 1990, she contacted me about building her a custom animation stand/rear projection machine after obtaining a Ford Foundation grant to pay for it, among other things. She stated her needs and I set about building her a hand-made machine worthy of a Marin County artist – redwood and all. As I recall she was setting about making a series of documentaries about her native land that combined painting over live action footage. She went through several first surface mirrors and rear projection screens with paint splattering everywhere.
When she arrived at my studio to pick up the animation stand, she was struck by its beauty and kind of afraid of it. I showed her how to use it and off she and a friend went with it in the back of her vehicle.
Some years later she got a grant from Sweden to support her for life as a national artist. To return to Sweden she had to make her whole life fit in a single shipping container, car included. There was no room for the machine I built her and the art institute where she was moving near had not only the machinery she needed but student assistants to help. She sold the machine to a pair of animators in the bay area, whereabouts unknown.
I used the funds from the stand to finish my last film, Selective Memory. The editorial decisions in the film (though few would know it) were based on the life and work of the second of my two life mentors – Will Hindle. The aesthetics gleaned from him, Gunvor and the others I was introduced to guide me to this day.
