WHYY Friday Arts profile of visual artist features Colony with B-roll footage from filmmakers in residence
MacDowell Fellows Christina Choe and Brandon Neubauer collaborated on a film project during their residencies last autumn about MacDowell Fellow Marc Brodzik. The New Jersey-born artist, who spent six weeks during a residency in the Firth Studio in 2000, installs original portraits of everyday people in public spaces, runs an Internet television channel, and operates a documentary film company called Woodshop Films.
Brodzik’s work in digital media won him a Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 2009, and WHYY, the Philadelphia-based public television station, decided to do a segment on Brodzik for its Friday Arts video journal. Michael O’Reilly, the producer on the project and yet another MacDowell Fellow, was well into production on the video about Brodzik, concentrating on the artist’s wide range of interests. He had plenty of footage of Brodzik at the SCRAPPLE TV studios at his woodshop, but O’Reilly needed more footage from the MacDowell Colony. He called up and spoke to Resident Director David Macy.
According to Neubauer, Macy told Choe about the project because she was working in Firth Studio -- the same studio Brodzik had occupied 12 years before -- and she then approached Neubauer one day outside Savidge Memorial Library. The two filmmakers then decided to join forces on the project to help their peer in Philadelphia get the video he needed.
“It just started to make sense that I would help out because I also work with video, Neubauer said. “I had the equipment and was working nearby. My studio was Putnam Graphics.”
Armed with a shot list provided by O’Reilly, Choe and Neubauer set to work shooting atmospheric shots of the colony, Firth Studio, and the studio’s tombstones, including the back of one on which Brodzik painted his portrait of Dan, “The Weekend Guy.”
“With this framework, Christina and I shot inside and outside of her studio and I shot the atmospheric shots of Colony Hall and the other studios a few days later after a little snow,” said Neubauer. “It was good timing for me, because I was just starting to get my creative bearings, and it was a straightforward assignment to explore the grounds photographically.”
The nine-minute video paints an interesting portrait of Brodzik and The MacDowell Colony itself. It tells of how dialogue with artists at MacDowell informed his creative process and helped him to develop the painting techniques he uses to this day and to begin his evolution as a filmmaker.
