Pam Turner discusses the animus in animation, the power of place, and her extraordinary journey from tenant farm to university.
This episode also features Hope Ginsburg, professor of Kinetic Imaging at VCUarts.
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About Pam Turner
Pamela Taylor Turner is an artist, writer and educator working at the intersection of animation and emerging media. Her practice—both in the studio and on the page—explores animation as an inventive, interdisciplinary art form, a medium for expressing inner states and for deepening our sense of place and connection to the natural world and to our knowledge of place. Her work gravitates towards abstraction and open narrative and is underpinned by a childhood spent in the woods of rural Virginia and an unwitting nudge from her parents who gave her a Kodak Pocket Instamatic camera when she was eleven (which she still has).
Her early animations, Falling Back to Earth: Tomatillo (2000) and Between Frames (2005), emerged from an intimate dialogue with gardens— witnessing and attending to soil, light, and the subtle choreography of plants. These works embody the principles of ecopsychology, inviting viewers to experience transformation through presence and observation.
Currently, Turner is completing Unsettling Chapel Island, a long-term study and animation project rooted in years of research along the James River, while continuing her series Seeking/Sensing.
Her animations have been exhibited nationally and internationally at galleries and festivals, including Ajijic Festival Internacional de Cine (Mexico), Nashville Independent Film Festival, Worldfest Houston, and Mill Valley Film Festival. Her work has earned numerous honors, among them a Director’s Citation at the Black Maria Film Festival and a Gold Award at Worldfest Houston.
As an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinetic Imaging at VCUarts, Turner teaches independent and expanded animation and developed Animating Place, a course grounded in ecopsychology and the transformative process of animation. She is currently a faculty fellow with the Richmond Cemetery Collaboratory through VCU Division of Community Engagement.
Turner holds advanced certifications in Ecopsychology, Radical Ecopsychology, and a certificate in Enchantment from Pacifica Graduate Institute.
About Hope Ginsburg
Hope Ginsburg is a maker of collaborative projects where art, ecology and spirituality meet. She is currently exploring the relationship between meditation and the natural world: that attunement in contemplative practice is deepened in nature, just as meditation reveals a feeling of awe and connection to our environment. Her recent work asks how this reciprocal experience moves us to action as part of a living world that urgently needs our attention.
Ginsburg holds a Master of Science in Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia (Tsenacomoco land), with her partner and frequent collaborator, Joshua Quarles, and their three cats. Ginsburg is a professor of Kinetic Imaging at VCUarts.
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VCUarts Uncharted is recorded in the Community Media Center in the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU. Music by Felipe Letão.
For more information, visit arts.vcu.edu/uncharted.
