Corrie Francis Parks

Work samples

SKRFF

A graffiti wall becomes an archeological site and a sgraffito sculpture, as skrffologists activate traces of the past with stopmotion animation. But can history ever be remembered clearly in all its complexity?
Foreign Exchange

Using a collection of banknotes and sand gathered from over 50 countries, "Foreign Exchange" takes you into a tiny world of dazzling details and infinite interconnections. What you observe there, and the meaning you derive from that observation depends on where you start your journey. Look closely, it's all in the details...
Uncanny Bodies

Uncanny Bodies draws on the artistry of scientific documentarians like Robert Hooke and F. Percy Smith, who revealed the wonders of microscopic structures and beings through the technology of their times. For me, working with sand means contemplating the significance of the individual. On a microscopic scale, the movement of one small grain can ripple down the length of a beach, can tilt the world on its axis. When I inspect these trivial fragments of geological history, I find their inner autonomy. By shrinking time, I discover complex relationships within their small communities, which the human eye is too impatient to see. Carefully constructing an intimate environment for them, I coax them to reveal their gravity and impulse. This is the science-magic of the animator, to discover the invisible life in the overlooked, offering the possibility of significance to the diminutive. Sound by Jason Charney
freeze/thaw - The Peale

freeze/thaw was adapted for projection in the Garden View Gallery at The Peale in Baltimore. This version of the piece offered a fully immersive experience for the viewer to sit with the glacier, now in an enveloping scale and surround sound created specifically for the space by my collaborator, Maksym Prykhodko. The piece was on view during the SPARK VI exhibition from 26 October – 26 November, 2023.

About Corrie

Corrie Francis Parks is an inventor of animation techniques. Adopting an investigative studio practice where substance collides with subject, each project builds upon the discoveries made in the previous, making the arduous process of frame-by-frame creation engaging. The results of this studio research manifest not only in short films, but in expanded animation projects that involve projection mapping, site-specific installations, augmented reality and… more

View Corrie's Resume

SKRFF_ology

The SKRFF_ology project began on a chilly winter day in Vienna, Austria, when a group of artists gathered to experiment with spray cans and a utility knife. The public graffiti walls in Vienna were designated as a legal and safe place to spray in 1982. Since then hundreds of artists have left their mark, covering the traces of their predecessors in the creation of the present. On this day, the artists unleashed an explosion of colorful history by cutting into the wall in search of the original artwork.

Treating the walls like archeological sites and sgraffito sculptures, the artists dubbed themselves "Skrffologists", excavating over an inch of colorful paint representing decades of artistic, political and cultural expression. Working on site at various public walls over several months, the Skrffologists explored different ways to activate and reveal the layers through stop motion.

Despite it's dazzling abstractions, SKRFF_ology is ultimately about our limited view of the past. The work spawned conversations about Austria’s history of Nazism and the present-day revival of right-wing extremists there and elsewhere, street art as an indicator of political tides, and whether it is ever possible to avoid repeating past mistakes since we never truly have the full picture. This collaborative project continues to find different manifestations, including an animated short film, projection mapping and sculptural installations and augmented reality images.

SKRFF_ologists:

Corrie Francis Parks http://corrieparks.com/

Daniel Nuderscher https://www.danielnuderscher.com/

Thom Parks https://www.instagram.com/mohthom/

Sandro Nicolussi https://soundcloud.com/bydl

SKRFF Trailer

The short film SKRFF is a prominent manifestation of the SKRFF_ology project, a collection of media works that investigate the hidden layers of cultural, political, and artistic history of public graffiti walls. Shot in Vienna, Austria, at a graffiti wall made legal for public expression in 1982, the SKRFF-ologists activate the layers of colorful paint through stopmotion animation and time-manipulation. By compressing decades into second and juxtaposing the past with the present, the artists ask if we can truly learn from our limited view of history or if we are bound to repeat it.
SKRFF - Behind the Scenes

Behind the scenes at Schwedenplatz for the making of SKRFF. Using ultility knives and chisels, the animators carved into the past, bit by bit, revealing a small sliver of color to represent each street artist that encountered the wall.

Music: Inhale by Beat Mekanik
freemusicarchive.org/music/beat-mekanik/single/inhale/
SKRFF at Water Light Festival

The SKRFF_ologist were invited to create a site-specific installation in the historic Neustift Abbey as part of the 2024 Water Light Festival in Brixen, Italy. The work was projected in the stairwell adjacent to the main library and the Chinese cabinet room, where frescos dating from around 1775/80 were recently discovered underneath seven layers of plaster.
SKRFF at Water Light Festival

The SKRFF_ologists were invited to create a site-specific installation in the historic Neustift Abbey as part of the 2024 Water Light Festival in Brixen, Italy. The work was projected in the stairwell adjacent to the main library and the Chinese cabinet room, where frescos dating from around 1775/80 were recently discovered underneath seven layers of plaster.
SKRFF - Wall piece

This 2 inch piece of the graffiti wall was displayed as part of the installation at Neustift Abbey during the 2024 Water Light Festival in Brixen, Italy.
SKRFF_ology - Canyons

One of the SKRFF carvings made at a 40-year old graffiti wall in Vienna, Austria.
SKRFF - Hole

This augmented reality image is activated through the app Artivive. To see the animation embedded in the image, download the free Artivive app via the iPhone and Android app store, then view the image through the app interface.
SKRFF - Lines

This augmented reality image is activated through the app Artivive. To see the animation embedded in the image, download the free Artivive app via the iPhone and Android app store, then view the image through the app interface.
rabbit_trigger_0.jpg

This augmented reality image is activated through the app Artivive. To see the animation embedded in the image, download the free Artivive app via the iPhone and Android app store, then view the image through the app interface.
SKRFF_ology Augemented Reality Documentation

Documentation of three augmented reality prints from the SKRFF_ology project. The prints were installed at AREA 405 Gallery in Baltimore, USA as part of the Sweaty Eyeballs: Animation Adjacent show from Sept 13- Oct 20, 2024. The artworks are activated through the free Artivive app and viewed through a mobile device.

Foreign Exchange

Foreign Exchange leads us through a world of imaginary borders and unexpected encounters, highlighting the state-sanctioned mythology embedded on national currency. At times whimsical, with undercurrents of the uncanny, grains of sand reveal their inner directive as they navigate the details of banal nationalism. Shot up close with a macro lens and frame by frame stopmotion, the scale of the images invite the viewer to look closely at the unseen connections we have with the wider world. The leavings of globalization are a useless banknote from another country tucked in the back of a drawer, symbolizing the possibility of return, whether that means going home or going away. I collected these leftover banknotes from friends, family and social networks to construct a new narrative of international migration.

Foreign Exchange

Using a collection of banknotes and sand gathered from over 50 countries, "Foreign Exchange" looks like nothing you have seen before, taking you into a tiny world of dazzling details. What you observe there, and the meaning you derive from that observation depends on where you start your journey. Look closely, it's all in the details...
ForeignExchange_01.jpg

Foreign Exchange - video still
ForeignExchange_02.jpg

Foreign Exchange - video still
Imaginary border

Film still
Foreign ExchangeProduction Shot

Animated grain by grain in the studio
Eye of Providence

The all seeing eye. Film still.
Micro multiplane

A miniature multiplane built specifically for the production.

Uncanny Bodies

As beings confined to our own understanding of time and space, the camera lens offers a portal into a new world of scale. As you step into the gallery, you condense to the size of a grain of sand. Your relationship to the world changes. The space is intimate, but expansive. Your time here is brief, but the opportunity for discovery is immense. Look closely… the life hides in the details.

"Uncanny Bodies" is a collection of video and collage works by artist Corrie Francis Parks. It is a developing body of work which includes micro animation paired with minature sculptures and dioramas. The works were first installed as a solo show at the Montpelier Arts Center in Laurel, MD from June 11 - August 1, 2021, and later at Lycoming College Gallery, in Williamsport, PA, from October 21 – November 28, 2022.

Uncanny Bodies

Uncanny Bodies draws on the artistry of scientific documentarians like Robert Hooke and F. Percy Smith, who revealed the wonders of microscopic structures and beings through the technology of their times. For me, working with sand means contemplating the significance of the individual. On a microscopic scale, the movement of one small grain can ripple down the length of a beach, can tilt the world on its axis. When I inspect these trivial fragments of geological history, I find their inner autonomy. By shrinking time, I discover complex relationships within their small communities, which the human eye is too impatient to see. Carefully constructing an intimate environment for them, I coax them to reveal their gravity and impulse. This is the science-magic of the animator, to discover the invisible life in the overlooked, offering the possibility of significance to the diminutive. Sound by Jason Charney
Uncanny Bodies - Gallery

Uncanny Bodies projected on a wall in the gallery.
Angle of Repose

Video works "Angle of Repose" and "Butterfly Effect" installed in the gallery.
Angle of Repose

Video work Angle of Repose in the gallery
Uncanny Bodies - micro sculpture

A micro sculpture used to create the animation in Uncanny Bodies
Uncanny Bodies - micro sculpture

Micro sculpture used to create the animation in Uncanny Bodies
Uncanny Bodies - Gallery

Detail of the video work "Uncanny Bodies"
Uncanny Bodies - still

Video still - Uncanny Bodies
Uncanny Bodies - still

Video Still - Uncanny Bodies
Angle of Repose - Still

Video still - Angle of Repose

freeze/thaw

freeze/thaw is an iterative installation inspired by rock glaciers, an essential and largely unknown part of alpine environments. Unlike glaciers made of pure ice, in a rock glacier the ice is protected from warming temperatures by a blanket of debris several meters thick. These will be the last glaciers of the anthropocene. Due to the seasonal freeze-thaw cycle, these massive rock piles also creep slowly forward, creating striking ripples and furrows in their form.

The work was first conceived and realized for the Asifakeil at the Musuemsquartier in Vienna, Austria. The installation uses sand and sediments collected from two rock glaciers and one glacier in the Austrian alps, all of which are part of the Danube river catchment. Austria is home to 5769 rock glaciers, but only 2309 still contain ice and feed their hydrological catchments. During my Fulbright/Q21 residency at the Museumsquartier in Vienna, I infused these sediments with frozen water from the Danube to create miniature rock glaciers. Using a technique practiced on economically significant glaciers at ski areas, I wrap these miniature rock glaciers in synthetic blankets as a way of protecting them from anthropogenic influence and record their freeze/thaw cycles as a way of translating a Deep Time phenomenon into more visible Human Time. The resulting videos are complimented with sound design by Baltimore artist Maksym Prykhodko and installed as a response to the architecture of the space. Despite their fragility, these miniature rock glaciers find an uneasy equilibrium in the urban environment, offering viewers a moment to pause and sync their breath with the natural alpine cycles as transitory antidote to climate anxiety.

Iterations:

Apr 19 – May 24, 2023: Site-specific installation, Museumsquartier Asifakeil, Vienna, Austria

Sept 8 – Oct 14, 2023: Sweaty Eyeballs: Outside the Frame, Current Space, Baltimore, USA

Oct 26 – Nov 26, 2023: Spark VI: Refractions The Peale, Baltimore, USA

Animation and Installation: Corrie Francis Parks

Sound: Maksym Prykhodko

Press: More about the project in this interview.

freeze/thaw - detail

One of the miniature rock glaciers installed in the Asifakeil gallery in Vienna.
freeze/thaw - The Peale
freeze/thaw - The Peale

freeze/thaw was adapted for projection in the Garden View Gallery at The Peale in Baltimore. This version of the piece offered a fully immersive experience for the viewer to sit with the glacier, now in an enveloping scale and surround sound created specifically for the space by my collaborator, Maksym Prykhodko. The piece was on view during the SPARK VI exhibition from 26 October – 26 November, 2023.
freeze/thaw - Asifakeil

This iteration of freeze/thaw is a site specific installation for the Asifakeil at the Musuemsquartier in Vienna, Austria. Austria is home to 5769 rock glaciers, but only 2309 still contain ice and feed their hydrological catchments. The installation contextualizes the distant alpine source of the city's river, the Danube, by integrating the "active" rock glaciers (Blockgetschern) into the urban environment. Surrounded by a landscape of “city sediment” (baushutt) scavenged from various construction and demolition projects around Vienna, these miniature rock glaciers find an uneasy equilibrium in the urban environment, offering viewers a moment to pause and sync their breath with the natural alpine cycles as an antidote to climate anxiety.
freeze/thaw - detail
Innere Olgrube rock glacier

The Innere Olgrube rock glacier in Austria where the sand was collected for the piece
Glacier blankets

A synthetic blanket covers a shrinking glacier at the Kaunertal ski area in Austria. Fragments of these blankets were used in the artwork.
Sound recording

Sound for the piece was made with field recordings and studio recordings of the sand and then arranged into the composition.

Eye of Djerba

Eye of Djerba is an original site specific interactive installation with light, sand, and projection created for the International Media Arts Biennial SEE DJERBA on the island of Djerba in Tunisia. The work asks viewers to look closely and consider the metaphorical worth of a single grain of sand within a global context. Viewers control a microscope camera to examine grains of sand from Djerba, enlarging the tiny grains to a human scale as they are projected on the facade of the St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Houmet Souk. The festival ran nightly from 29 Aug - 1 Sept and approximately 600 people interacted with the work during that time.

Eye of Djerba

Live microscopic view of sand from the island of Djerba, Tunisia.
Eye of Djerba

Visitors interact with the installation during See Djerba Festival
Eye of Djerba - Sand piles

Magnifying globes allow visitors to view piles of sand from different parts of the world up close.
Microscope camera

Using a microscope camera, visitors project their view of the sand into the center circle of the façade projection.
discovering the details

It's all about the tiny details...
Installation view

Tunisian guides help visitors interact with the installation.
Choosing sand

Each visitor chooses one grain of sand to add to a collection.
Special sand

The collection of hand-picked grains of sand grows over the duration of the festival.
Hand-picked sand

One bottle from each night of the festival.
Eye of Djerba

Snow Beach

Snow Beach is an original site specific interactive installation with light, sand, and projection created for the UnDark Festival in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Snow Beach explores the connection between sand and snow as a touristic draw and economic resource. Using sand collected from beach renourishment projects along the eastern seaboard of the USA, I recreate the movement of the ocean waves, projecting them on the surface of man-made snow at the Уктус ski area in land-locked Yekaterinburg, Russia. The location and atmosphere of the installation invites relaxation and play while pointing to societal efforts to maintain recreation environments that are dependent on the ecological cycles of natural replenishment threatened by climate change.

Snow Beach - UNDARK Festival

Snow Beach is an original site specific interactive installation with light, sand, and projection created for the UnDark Festival in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Snow Beach explores the connection between sand and snow as a touristic draw and economic resource. Using sand collected from beach renourishment projects along the eastern seaboard of the USA, I recreate the movement of the ocean waves, projecting them on the surface of man-made snow at the Уктус ski area in land-locked Yekaterinburg, Russia. The location and atmosphere of the installation invites relaxation and play while pointing to societal efforts to maintain recreation environments that are dependent on the ecological cycles of natural replenishment threatened by climate change.

Individual Grains

When seen in a pile, sand presents itself as uniformity: black sand, red sand, fine sand, coarse sand. But upon close inspection, even the most homogeneous manufactured sand disperses into individuality. When animated at this level of magnification, a single grain finds its own autonomy. We like to categorize and quantify, which is easy enough with inanimate objects. Numbers make it easy to pass judgement and pass policies. But when a grain of sand is animated, it reveals its inner motivation and we catch a glimpse of its story. It transforms into an unquantifiable encasement of life.

Each work in this collection explores an angle of the social and political systems in which the individual can be lost in the abstractness of the group. The light sculptures offer a tangible presence which can be inspected in an intimate setting, while the accompanying video are a meditation on the life within each grain of sand.

Individual Grains at Spectrum

Video and photo documentation of five video and sculpture installations at the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA. Each work in this collection explores an aspect of the social and political systems in which the individual can be lost in the abstractness of the group. Via provided magnifiers, viewers closely examine such inscrutable topics as economic stratification, redlining, and gender equality, placing the complexity of a single grain of sand in the context of its story.
Black Butterfly

Black Butterfly is a video installation and sculpture that uses location mapping from Open Baltimore Police Department Part 1 Victim Based Crime Data. Each grain of sand represents one individual who was killed in Baltimore from 2007-2017.
Black Butterfly - detail

Black Butterfly is a video installation and sculpture that uses location mapping from Open Baltimore Police Department Part 1 Victim Based Crime Data. Each grain of sand represents one individual who was killed in Baltimore from 2007-2017.
Desired to Move

Desires to Move is a video installation and sculpture about systemic racism in housing policy and its generational repercussions in underserved communities. Shot at macro level, tiny grains of sand navigate through color-coded “neighborhoods”, sourced from the 1937 Residential Security Map of Baltimore
Desires to Move - detail

Desires to Move is a video installation and sculpture about systemic racism in housing policy and its generational repercussions in underserved communities. Shot at macro level, tiny grains of sand navigate through color-coded “neighborhoods”, sourced from the 1937 Residential Security Map of Baltimore
Political Bands

Political Bands is a video installation and sculpture about the dissolution of ideological and cultural groups in the current political climate. Shot at macro level on a $100 bill, tiny grains of sand group, dissolve, and regroup in an endless cycle.
Political Bands - detail

Political Bands is a video installation and sculpture about the dissolution of ideological and cultural groups in the current political climate. Shot at macro level on a $100 bill, tiny grains of sand group, dissolve, and regroup in an endless cycle.
Messy Conversation

A piece about difficult conversation between opposing sides.
Messy Conversation - detail

A piece about difficult conversations between opposing sides.
Studio documentation

Macro sand animation

Bay Bingo - with Kelley Bell

Bay Bingo is a large-scale projection created for and exhibited at the Light City Baltimore Festival in collaboration with artist Kelley Bell. The whimsical animated work draws parallels between the fragile ecosystem and recent regeneration of the Chesapeake Bay and its landmark city, Baltimore, Maryland.

Subsequent commissioned versions of the work were created for the Great South Bay, in Patchogue NY, and Corpus Christi Bay in Texas.

Learn more about our City, our Bay, and the fish featured in Bay Bingo in our online Limerick Field Guide. As you watch the piece, play our mobile bingo game. The first to find 4 fish in a row, wins!

Exhibitions

Light City Baltimore
28 March – 3 April, 2016
Columbus Center, Baltimore, MD

Animafest goes MSU
21 May – 9 June, 2016
Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia

MoCA L.I.ghts
5-8 November, 2020
Bargain Bilge Facade, Patchogue, NY

underCurrent
18 September – 1 December 2023
CCBC Essex, MD

Projected Aquaculture - Light City 2016

Projected Aquaculture is a large-scale projection mapping animation created by Corrie Francis Parks and Kelley Bell for Light City Baltimore 2016. This 5-minute looping animation was projected on the 250-foot-wide canopy of the IMET center on the Inner Harbor in Baltimore from March 28-April 4, 2016. Through a whimsical approach to animation, the piece presents the underwater ecosystem of the Chesapeake Bay, drawing parallels between the decline and resurgence of the Bay’s health and the similar decline and recent efforts to transform Baltimore into a livable city.
Projected Aquaculture

Projected Aquaculture on the Columbus Center canopy at Light City 2016
Projected Aquaculture

Production still
Projected Aquaculture

Still from the production
Projected Aquaculture

Still from the production
Blue Crab

Limerick from the guidebook. Click the image to see it move. Can you solve it?
Cownose Ray

Limerick from the guidebook. Click the image to see it move. Can you solve it?
Sea Nettle

Limerick from the guidebook. Click the image to see it move. Can you solve it?
Long Nose Gar

Limerick from the guidebook. Click the image to see it move. Can you solve it?
Chessie

Limerick from the guidebook. Click the image to see it move. Can you solve it?

The Klondike Letters Project

The Klondike Letters Project is a public art project in collaboration with Klondike Goldrush International Historic Park. From June 25 thru July 7, 2012, I hiked the historic Chilkoot Trail as an artist-in-residence. During that 2 week period, I asked my fellow travelers to write a postcard to themselves as they hiked over the historic Chilkoot Pass from Alaska to the Yukon. The 174 postcards, along with sound recordings and my drawings from the trail, formed a collective memory portrait of the Chilkoot Trail. One year later, when the words and images of that journey had lost their sharpness and faded in the mind, I mailed those postcards to the writers as a vibrant catalyst for our memories of the Chilkoot.

From July 5 thru July 9, 2016, I hiked the trail again bringing a box of fresh postcards in the hopes of establishing an ongoing project. With the help of trail rangers and hut wardens from the National Parks Service and Parks Canada, we collected over 742 postcards in 2016, 1274 postcards in 2017, and over 1700 in 2018! Unfortunately the pandemic brought an end to the project in 2020. Learn more and read postcards on klondikeletters.com

On a deeper level, this project is about why we seek out places of wildness and what we experience there. Though the stampeders were seeking gold in the Klondike wilderness, the vast majority didn’t find their fortune. From their letters and diaries, we can see they did find other things: adventure, suffering, love, an insight into human nature at its best and worst. It’s a long journey to get to the Klondike. What do you find in this place that you can’t experience in your daily life, what moment is going to change your life in some small but hopefully significant way? Ultimately, this is what makes these places worth preserving.

The Klondike Letters Project

The Klondike Letters Project is an ongoing public art project in Klondike Goldrush International Historic Park. Hikers preserve a memory from the top of Chilkoot Pass by writing a postcard to their future self, which is then sent one year later. These are postcards from 2016 season on the Chilkoot Trail.
Chilkoot Pass

Hikers arriving at the warming hut at the top of Chilkoot Pass.
Postcard

A postcard written by a hiker
Postcard

A postcard written by a hiker
Postcard

A postcard written by a hiker
Postcard

A postcard written by a hiker
Postcard

Postcard written by a hiker at the top of Chilkoot Pass
Postcard

Postcard drawn by a hiker at the top of Chilkoot Pass
Postcard

Postcard written by a hiker at the top of Chilkoot Pass
Postcard

Postcard written by a hiker at the top of Chilkoot Pass

A Tangled Tale

Video, 2013
A lone fish, hooked by an angler's line, encounters another in the same dire situation. As the two fish struggle against their fate, they develop an inevitable, entangling attraction. Is it love or merely a will to survive?

This vibrant, underwater world showcases a revolutionary approach to sand animation. Animated in sand with watercolor backgrounds, the 3600 frames of the film are a seamless blend of traditionally handcrafted imagery and digital painting. The technique involves moving sand on a backlit plate of glass, creating silhouetted animation that is captured frame-by frame. Each drawing is destroyed in the process of creating the next, so at the end of the process there remains only a pile of sand. Through the art of compositing and motion design, it is the first film to expand the black and white aesthetic of traditional sand animation to include vibrant color and cinematic movement.

Love is a slippery business. Some will point to the heavens or chance as the source of our relationships, while others plow forward on the strength of self-determination. Either way, there is pain intertwined with a growing attraction, and the survival of a relationship depends on the perseverance of the lovers. In "A Tangled Tale", the fisherman’s line becomes an enigmatic metaphor for a fate and attraction, leading us to consider what is the source of our love and where it will ultimately take us.

A Tangled Tale

A lone fish, hooked by an angler's line, encounters another in the same dire situation. As the two fish struggle against their fate, they develop an inevitable, entangling attraction. Is it love or merely a will to survive? This vibrant, watery underwater world showcases my revolutionary approach to sand animation, a seamless blend of traditionally handcrafted imagery and technological innovation.
Making Of - A Tangled Tale
A-Tangled-Tale---Poster.jpg

A Tangled Tale - film poster
A Tangled Tale

A Tangled Tale - film still
A Tangled Tale

A Tangled Tale - film still
A Tangled Tale - production

Production still

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