Work samples
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Foreign ExchangeUsing 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...
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Uncanny BodiesUncanny 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
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EyeofDjerba_Parks001.jpgEye 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.
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Snow Beach - UNDARK FestivalSnow 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.
About Corrie

Corrie received her B.A. from Dartmouth College and her MFA from University of Southern California. Now an Associate… more
Foreign Exchange
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Foreign ExchangeUsing 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...
Uncanny Bodies
As beings confined to our own understanding of time andspace, 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, installed at the Montpelier Arts Center in Laurel, MD from June 11 - August 1, 2021.
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Uncanny BodiesUncanny 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
Eye of Djerba
Snow Beach
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Snow Beach - UNDARK FestivalSnow 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
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.
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Individual Grains at SpectrumVideo 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.
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Desired to MoveDesires 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
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Desires to Move - detailDesires 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
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Studio documentationMacro sand animation
Projected Aquaculture
Learn more about our City, our Bay, and the fish featured in Projected Aquaculture in our online Limerick Field Guide. As you watch the piece, play our online interactive bingo game, Bay Bingo. 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
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Projected Aquaculture - Light City 2016Projected 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.
The Klondike Letters Project
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! 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.
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The Klondike Letters ProjectThe 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.
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, 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.
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A Tangled TaleA 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