Nora Rodriguez

“Working-class Latino hood, crossed with crazy artist, crossed with left-wing radical,” so the legendary underground cartoonist Spain Rodriguez is described in this intimate portrait by his wife, Emmy-nominated filmmaker Susan Stern.

Angels Going to Work is built from audio of my mother and grandmother discussing anxiety in the night. I’m interested in stories that take the shape of a spiral, routines—like the return to bed—that begin to outline larger stories. They are often about the ways loss finds form in the grooves worn into daily life. Like a hole thrown on a cartoon wall, they make physical what is only an absence.

Cut paper animation, draws on an audio interview with the director's Aunt Cynthia, as a strategy to explore storytelling passed on between generations, especially as inflected by assimilation.

Animation of an animation that makes a sculpture.