Michael is a video artist living and working in Houston, Texas. He grew up in the Bavarian Alps, not far from where the Sound of Music was filmed. He went to school in Munich and studied linguistics. For a couple of years he was a high school teacher in a small Bavarian town. Then, shortly before the beginning of the new millennium, he decided Germany was too cold for him and he moved to Texas. There he got a BA in broadcast journalism and TV production and an MFA in Photography and Digital Media, both from the University of Houston. For the past ten years he has worked in various aspects of TV production and currently works for the Texas Learning and Computation Center at the University of Houston as a Visualization Specialist. For more on Michael please visit www.michaelbrims.info.
 

Ellen Lake received her MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California in 2002, where she studied sculpture, film & video, and installation.  She is the recipient of a 2009 Sarah Jacobson Film Grant and 2005/2006 Bay Area Video Coalition’s Mediamaker Award.  Work from her latest series combining vintage home movies with cell phone and digital media today has shown at the Walker Art Center, Exit Art, Heaven Gallery, Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon, as well several film festivals such as the Disposable Film Festival, Pocket Film Festival, and Mill Valley Film Festival. Additional work has shown at Pacific Film Archive, the Exploratorium, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and internationally at the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Center for Digital Art in Holon, Israel. To see other videos by Ellen Lake, go to:http://ellenlake.com

2011 ARTISTS

Mary Benedicto:
Mary Benedicto produces extraordinary digital works that refigure the experience of animation. Creating Rorschach-like fields of seething color, form and motion, Benedicto pushes the boundaries of digital manipulated psychedelia. Her mesmerizing works engage with a powerful, sensual force that is expressed in videos, loops, installation, and electronic music.   Benedicto has a Master of Fine Arts from University of Texas at Dallas and has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from East Texas State University.  She has exhibited her work at Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, Chicago Underground Film Festival and University of Texas at Dallas. To learn more about Mary, please visit: http://marybenedicto.com

Chris Nelson:
Chris Nelson is digital filmmaker, born in New Orleans and living and working in Houston. He is the director/editor of Toypunks, Vol. 1 and co-founder of Toypunks and Reckless Toys. In 2004, he helped launch a digital cable channel devoted to Japanese animation as the Director of Programming and Chief Creative Officer of The Anime Network. To see digital shorts from Chris Nelson, click here. To view clips from his documentary film TOY PUNKS, click here.

2012 ARTISTS

OTIS IKE:
OTIS IKE (a.k.a. Patrick Bresnan) is a self-taught photographer, video artist, affordable housing activist and builder. From 2003-2007, Ike worked as a fabricator for notable Mission School artists Clare Rojas and Barry McGee (a.k.a. Twist), aiding in the creation of new work for exhibitions in the United States and abroad. His architectural work includes disaster relief housing on the Gulf Coast, cottages for the homeless in Austin, TX and structures for his photo and video installations. In 2010, Ike was awarded the top grant from the 2010 Texas Filmmakers Production Fund to finalize post-production of a feature length documentary about Vietnam War re-enactors, Vietnam Appreciation Day. www.otisike.com

Ivete Lucas:
Ivete Lucas is a filmmaker and video artist of Brazilian and Mexican heritage. Her first short film Asthma was nationally released in Mexican movie theaters and shortlisted for the Mexican Academy Awards. Since then she has made several short fiction and documentary films, which have screened at festivals in the United States, Switzerland, Peru and Mexico. Her video art installations, in which she collaborates with filmmaker/artist Otis Ike, have been displayed in art galleries in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston and Philadelphia.  Her new project The Curse and the Jubilee was awarded a Texas Filmmakers Production Fund award in 2011. She is currently a fellow of the Mexican Fund for Culture and the Arts. Chek out her work here.