Old Redwood Series - 95 min. silent, 1974-1979
Animations - by Jack Fisher and Carl Conversa

In 1974 I moved to a rural property on Old Redwood Highway in Sonoma County near the town of Penngrove California where I still live. I had started a filmmaking curriculum in the Art Department at nearby Sonoma State University in 1969 after obtaining an MA in Film from San Francisco State University, and wanted to live closer to work.

During the ensuing years of developing the land, remodeling the house, the studios, and various outbuildings, as well as various projects and excursions with my partner and friends, I carried around the smallest and humblest of unobtrusive regular 8mm movie cameras with which I could both record interesting moments and also weave a cinematic fabric equivalent to the gestural style and compositional concerns of Abstract Expressionism, a style of painting I had studied, practiced, and related to since the late 1950s. In other words, these film interludes are Abstract Expressionist home movies.