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Animated shorts by three artists will be featured at the Short Shorts Festival, which runs Tuesday through Nov. 4 at the McDonough Museum of Art.
"Creatures in My House" is Ilena Finocchi's first animated short film. In this stop-motion animated short, the exquisitely handcrafted world follows a house full of peculiar monsters waking up amuck in this askew home. It is a colorful nod to film noir and German expressionism.
Finocchi's sculptural work has been exhibited nationally, including Art Basil Miami, SoFA Chicago and the Museum of Art & Design in New York.
Illya Mousavijad's "Between a Lost Home and a Losing Destination" is a computer animation film / video piece using 3D scanning and Photogrammetry. It investigates the depth and limits of the exile and migration experience as they relate the artist's heritage / Iranian diaspora. The translation to 3D / computer aims to explore the notions of proximity, distance, access and inaccessibility.
Mousavijad is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Isfahan, Iran. He received his bachelor's degree at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and his master's from the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a visiting assistant professor at The Ohio State University.
Michael Schmidt's two stop-motion animations, "Passages" and "Collapse," feature events and experiences of employees of AEP Conesville, a coal-fired power plant operated out of Coshocton County from 1957 to 2020. These animations were made as part of a performance that gave voice to the loss of a way of life and paid tribute to the generations of coal energy the plant produced.
Schmidt has degrees from California State University at Long Beach and the Cleveland Institute of Art. He has exhibited internationally and is in private collections around the country. Schmidt works as an adjunct professor at the University of Mount Union and the University of Akron and as a freelance artist.
A viewing party is planned at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the museum, 525 Wick Ave., Youngstown. For more information, call 330-941-1371.