SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA.- The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art presents southwestNET: animation, on view through August 21, 2005. We live in the midst of a renaissance in animation: hilarious presidential-election spoofs fly around the Internet, TV commercials feature animated lizards and Shrek 2 is a box-office smash. This boom of interest has been fueled, in part, by a generation of viewers raised on video games and by the wide availability of animation software. Although animation typically brings to mind Saturday morning cartoons, the medium actually had its start with adult viewers, who were entertained by the quirky animated shorts that preceded early feature films. As a genre, animation has grown in many directions, further invigorated of late by new techniques and new audiences.

southwestNET: animation focuses on the work of two outstanding�and very different�independent animators. Flat Black Films is an experimental animation workshop run by Bob Sabiston. He invented the revolutionary computer software Rotoshop�a digital version of rotoscoping (an early 20th-century animation technique of tracing over film footage). Known for his fresh style, Sabiston has animated shorts for MTV, PBS and filmmakers Lars von Trier and J�rgen Leth; he also worked on Richard Linklater�s full-length film Waking Life, 2001. Sabiston�s subjects range from the chance meeting in Central Park featured in Grasshopper, 2003, to the pure abstraction of Line Research, 2003, both in this exhibition.

Stacey Steers�s approach is quite the opposite. Painstakingly hand-drawn and grounded by tradition, her work is always intensely personal, playful yet contemplative. Totem, 1999, and Watunna, 2000, each required thousands of drawings�5,000 and 9,000 respectively�and took several years to complete. Steers derived her imagery from the local myths and folklore she encountered during the decade she lived in remote areas of Latin America. Her process is unusually intuitive and labor intensive. She explains, �I don�t fully plan my work in advance and never use a storyboard. I start drawing or cutting and see where my mind leads me.� Her new film, Phantom Canyon, 2005, made from collages, will premier at SMoCA.

Stacey Steers currently resides in Denver, Colorado. Bob Sabiston and Flat Black Films are based in Austin, Texas. Organized by former SMoCA Assistant Curator Erin Kane, this exhibition is the sixth in SMoCA�s southwestNET series, which furthers SMoCA�s goal of highlighting exciting work by artists in the region and supporting the creation of new work. Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Presentation made possible in part by the SMoCA Salon.