My animated film “Swamp Angels” artist statement
When I was a kid, I believed God couldn’t possibly exist because of the fact that mosquitoes do.
The closer to home I am, the more mosquitos there are. On visits back home to South Florida, I’m red with bug bites and sun burns and happy cheeks. I’m alive and it’s itchy.
I’ve feared the future of flooding since middle school, mourning and trying to move on from the place that has been my home. I think about how as an artist, I’m doing the work of “imagining Florida.”
I don’t think I’m moving on, but rather trying to play with, feel, and communicate memories of a place that soon won’t exist as I knew it. It already exists differently than I knew it.
This animated film began from an interest in Florida wetlands and the connection between memory, water, and the way boundaries blur in the swamp.
Where does the water end and the sky begin? Where do you end and where do I begin? As the landscape of our childhood home slips away into water and returns to wetland, my best friends and I carry home forward in each other.
Your laugh is home to me. Your empathy is deep and generous. You see me. I’m from you.
thank you for reading ❤️ I’m trying out new formats to share writing and process and sketches let me know if you like this way of seeing my work
-Emily Kobert