Bruce Bickford
1947-02-11 | Seattle, Washington, USA
2019-04-28
Bruce Bickford (February 11, 1947 - April 28, 2019) was a maker of animated films who works primarily in clay animation. From 1974 to 1980 he collaborated with Frank Zappa. Bickford's animation was featured extensively in the Frank Zappa videos Baby Snakes and Dub Room Special. Zappa also released a video titled The Amazing Mr. Bickford, which was entirely composed of Bickford animations set to a soundtrack of Zappa's orchestral music.Bickford's animations depict surreal scenes based on his unique worldview. Often outwardly seeming to be somewhat disconnected from the world around him, Bruce Bickford's work is extremely subjective in its content and concepts, making for some disturbing and shocking imagery. Much of his video work depicted fast-moving, fluid-like transformations of human figures and disfigured faces into odd beasts on surreal structural settings with impressive camera effects (moving around within his stop-motion animation).His life and work were featured in the 2004 biographical documentary film Monster Road, directed by Brett Ingram, which has won numerous film festival awards and garnered acclaim in many countries.He is currently working on Boar's Head/Whore's Bed (line animation, 4500+ frames and counting), Tales of the Green River and Castle 2001, a feature-length film which is animated using 3D shapes made out of bits of paper.A new DVD was released by Bright Eye Pictures in early 2008, titled Prometheus' Garden. It includes the first film that Bickford had complete control over, the 28-minute Prometheus' Garden, originally completed on 16mm film in 1988. The DVD also includes Luck of a Foghorn, a new 30-minute documentary about Bickford by the director of Monster Road. Mr. Bickford was the first ever guest to appear on the internet radio show Pussyfoot.
