Lawrence Jordan

Known principally as a maverick spirit in the world of avantgarde American cinema Lawrence Jordan played an important role in the late 1950s and early 1960s San Francisco art scene Jordan has made over seventy experimental films including a number of fanciful filmic animations made from collaged cut outs of Victorian engravings The animations extend dreamlike imagery of collaged landscape into a cinematic realm of transformation and free form symbolism Jordan seeks to delve into the deep structures and Jungian connotations of the mythological images his films reference His alchemical approach to imagery creates what he has called the theater of the mind which you construct That is the Underworld the realm of the imagination You have to have a place to work with images Jordan founded the film department of the San Francisco Art institute in 1969 and taught there for over thirty years He made his own box assemblages in Cornell s lyrically evocative style since the mid1960s Many feature ingenious mechanical and kinetic effects He continues to make films and box collages at his home and studio in Petaluma where he has lived since 1978