Paul Glabicki

Paul Glabicki

    Paul Glabicki is a multimedia artist who works in animation, drawing, painting, filmmaking and photography among many others and many combinations of the aforementioned. He received a BFA in painting from Carnegie Mellon University and 2 MFAs in painting and filmmaking from Ohio State University. He's been a part of multiple film festivals, museum and gallery exhibitions, and has also taught art at Pitt for 26 years.
    Much of Glabicki's work focuses on the concept of time and motion. It also plays on the issues of juxtaposition and transformation, and pays particular attention to basic elements such as shape and line. His video "Five Improvisations" (1979) works with all of these issues masterfully. In it he takes apart five different short animations by their shapes and puts them back together all in accordance to music. The result is a pulsing orchestration of construction and deconstruction in repeat, offering quick glances at his drawings but not fully allowing the viewer to comprehend what he's seeing.
    His 1984 piece "Object Conversations" has a similar tempo to "Five Improvisations". It is fast paced and only allows the viewer to catch a quick glimpse of his drawings. To me this is interesting because his drawings are so neat and cleanly done. The lines are perfectly straight and the colors are neatly colored in, but you barely get to appreciate them because they are moving so fast. Also another important part of his piece is the music. The transition between frames is timed to classical music which gives it another layer of direction than if there were no music or maybe a different song playing.
    Glabicki's work relates to my own in a couple of different ways. First is his medium. I've been working in animation for a little over a year now. I've done hand drawn frame-by-frame, and I've also used software which he didn't have the luxury of using so I can appreciate the time and effort that he must have put into his work. But his work is also similar to mine in the both the composition and the transition timing. I've done pieces that have no particular focal point and have multiple things happening at once creating the illusion of chaos. His pieces all seem to have this in common. Also his hand can be seen in all of his pieces, some more than others. In some of videos I try and leave stray lines and eraser marks to convey a certain hand drawn feel similar to the kind that Glabicki went for in "Five Improvisations".
    I like Glabicki's work overall at first glance. He has a steady hand and is a talented drawer. Also like I said before, I appreciate the fact that he's doing everything without the help of a computer. His animation is very smooth and straight. For what he's trying to accomplish he does a good job. Even with his transitions being so quick he still takes time to make detailed drawings that might not be seen all the way by the viewer. If there's one weak point of his work I would say his audio could be a little better. Especially in "Five Improvisations", it doesn't really sync up all the way at some points and it's not very high quality. Also there are times in his other works where I'm not sure as a viewer what his message is. Maybe that's his goal, but it could be a little bit clearer.

"Paul Glabicki: Biographical Summary". Paul Glabicki Official Site. Red Fence 1999. Full Moon 2001. http://www.stillshot.net/pages/Glab_bio.html