Nora Snyder

I am a multimedia artist and stop motion animator. My work focuses on surreal narratives, experimental animation techniques, and puppetry. I use a wide variety of materials and techniques including three dimensional stop motion puppets, paper cut outs, and manipulation of light and shadow puppetry. I use these methods to create animated films that stand alone, but I also understand the value of going beyond a simple screen, and I like to incorporate animation and sculptural work into immersive installations. In my work I am drawn to magical realism, folklore, and eerie aesthetics. I use my artwork to find beauty and joy in the impermanence and instability of my body and the world around me. I am fascinated by stop motion animation animation and puppetry because the medium itself reveals how a life can have meaning even after the body has become inanimate. Though its time behind the camera is short, a stop motion puppet gains meaning through the lens of the eternal– when the film is finished and the frames are played back all at once. My motive is to discover how our fleeting experiences on earth are connected with the ethos of eternity and the neverending cycles of growth and decay. I aim to create characters and narratives that the viewer can feel connected to– puppetry and animation is a medium that allows us to explore the bounds of our sentimentality for non-living things, to project mortality onto them, which in turn allows us to learn new things about ourselves.