Sydney Montgomery
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Sydney Montgomery is an animator currently based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Working primarily with character animation and digital archival materials, Montgomery imagines and reimagines histories as experienced through memory and the human body, particularly through a disabled perspective. Montgomery’s most recent work, vision., flesh., and blood. is a trilogy of short animated films that use the making of medieval manuscripts to explore how art is informed by the body – from the sensations of material to the pain of making. These films also explore the possibilities of animation for highlighting themes for attendees of exhibitions for medieval manuscripts.
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Sydney Montgomery is an animator currently based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Working primarily with character animation and digital archival materials, Montgomery imagines and reimagines histories as experienced through memory and the human body, particularly through a disabled perspective. Montgomery’s most recent work, vision., flesh., and blood. is a trilogy of short animated films that use the making of medieval manuscripts to explore how art is informed by the body – from the sensations of material to the pain of making. These films also explore the possibilities of animation for highlighting themes for attendees of exhibitions for medieval manuscripts.
Sydney Montgomery. vision, flesh, and blood. 2021-2022. Three short animated films each displayed on a 32” monitor.
Alt text: The first monitor shows a still from the film vision: wax melting in a metal dish with the reflection of Agnus Dei, or the Lamb of God. The second shows a still from the film flesh: a monk covering lesions on his wrist with his sleeve as he looks at an illustration of Christ’s crucifixation in the Franciscan Missal. The third and final one shows a still from the film blood: a close up of a portrait of Evangelist Mark dipping a quill in ink, from the Freising Gospels.
A nun, experiencing a migraine, retreats to a dark room where she interprets her aura as religious visions and draws them on a wax tablet to be included in her commissioned manuscript. This depiction was inspired by theories of Hildegard von Bingen having migraines with aura. The thumbnail shows the preliminary sketches of two illuminations in a wax tablet.
A young monk with leprosy makes parchment from the skins of sheep. The thumbnail shows the monk looking back from a pew, the bricks behind him with the texture of parchment and diluted purple ink.
A shadowy figure gathers oak galls and green vitriol to create the ink for writing on the parchment folios. The thumbnail shows the shadowy figure standing under an oak tree and holding their hand up as blood-red rain falls.