Corrie's profile
Animator Corrie Francis Parks investigates themes of human individuality and significance through the geological lens of sand animation. Using sand collected from around the world, her films and installations evoke the uncanny, manipulating time and space to question the role of the human speck in Deep Time.
In addition to her award-winning short films, which have screened at Annecy, Hiroshima, Ottawa, Zagreb, and at major festivals around the world, Parks has created projection-based installations for Light City Baltimore (2016), International Media Art Biennial SEE DJERBA in Tunisia (2019), UnDARK Festival in Russia (2019), and "The People's Projector" at the Daniels & Fisher Tower in Denver (2021). She is currently working on a short film that approaches public graffiti walls from a geological and archeological perspective.
Parks has been artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony, Bogliasco Foundation, subnet Austria, Fundación Valparaíso and Klondike Goldrush International Historic Park. She has received Fulbright Fellowships to New Zealand and Austria and is a recipient of a 2019 Maryland Individual Artist Award. Her book, Fluid Frames: Experimental Animation with Sand, Clay, Paint and Pixels (2016) explores the tactile nature of moving malleable materials directly under the camera, bringing together traditional and digital workflow through interviews with contemporary animators and workshop-style exercises.
Parks has been creating animation since her teenage years. Despite administrative naysayers, she designed her own major in Animation at Dartmouth College (2001) and subsequently received her MFA in Animation and Digital Arts from University of Southern California (2006). She is now an Associate Professor of Visual Arts at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where she encourages animation students to expand their understanding of the art of movement.
