Handstrings

“I worked on this 1971-72, all footage shot in an attic room in my parents' home in the suburb of Clarendon Hills, IL, my youngest brother Mark Scharres assisting. Once again, I was interested in landscape, scale, and the parallels between natural shapes, landscape contours and the human body. I had also acquired a few vintage postcards with landscape images that interested me, and so I chose to incorporate one in the film. This film relates very much to my non-film artwork at the time which had made further use of postcards, as well as cutout standup figures that I made from photographs I had taken in Alaska and Japan. Starting with B&W photos that I printed in a home darkroom, I made extensive use of hand-coloring and collage techniques to created dioramas that were like small open air stage sets for the standing figures.” — filmmaker Barbara Scharres