A huge, luminescent and shimmering beetle crawls over the top of a darkened building, pauses and then scurries across the facade and into a window or around a corner. Another appears, runs along the façade, and is joined by more. Finally a beetle stops, and pauses. Antennae waving it summons the others to perform a vague dance of sorts before wandering off again.

 

Claire Eder creates a playful scene through painstakingly painting each individual frame, then animating her creations so that the brush strokes add masses of movement and form. Melding a beautifully delicate approach to hand-drawn animation with projection mapping, Eder’s new work for Illuminus reimagines the hollow industrial façade of the Power House as a site animated by an mesmerizing colony of imaginary creatures.

 

Claire Eder is a painter working in the South End who paints large-scale animals and insects on paper and on polycarbonate. Eder’s focus is their movement, which has led to an exploration of animation that combines movement with her approach to painting and drawing still frames.