Diana Greene Winston-Salem Monthly January 2008 Artist in Residence: Glenda Wharton

Glenda Wharton is an experimental animator who works the old school way. She draws and paints. No computer. No fancy program. Just her hand and imagination working to create the countless images needed for her short films. It’s a formidable task, given that ten seconds of animation can require up to three hundred drawings.

Currently she is making “The Zo and the Invisible Friend,” a film expected to run about thirty minutes. Nearly every day and many nights, Wharton sits drawing at her tall antique desk that once belonged to a pastor from Old Salem. The Winston-Salem native feels a connection to that sacred history. “My art is motivated by the spiritual,” she says. “It’s not a commercial thing.”

Wharton knows the difference. Ten years ago when she began a Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California, she planned to study special effects, a creative but commercial major. However, after seeing the experimental animation of Caroline Leaf and others, she changed direction. She began animating, creating worlds in which paintings move and the human psyche is explored.

“By nature I follow whatever I love,” she explains. That she would become the first (and perhaps only) African American woman in animation didn’t faze her. It became just another remarkable fact in the extraordinary life of this middle of five children born to Ruby and Wilson Wharton, a couple who worked in the city’s tobacco factories. “I wasn’t trying to be a pioneer,” Wharton smiles, “but I am one.”

By nature pioneers discover new territory and get noticed. This fall the North Carolina Arts Council awarded Wharton a fellowship worth $8,000. In 2005, Wharton became the first Southeastern artist awarded a grant from Creative Capital based in New York City. Aside from partially funding the production costs (about $300,000), Creative Capital is helping Wharton market and distribute her latest film.

“The Zo and the Invisible Friend” will be shown at The Sundance Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival and the Studio Museum of Harlem; it’s also under consideration at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the British Museum. After the film’s initial release, Wharton expects “The Zo” will be shown locally.

Wharton has completed the first of three acts in her surrealist film. The animation is about a girl who explores the strangely enchanting darkness beyond her bedroom. The soundtrack blends fugues and blues, folk songs and jazz. Nothing is perfectly clear, nothing lingers, disparate elements combine effortlessly, if illogically. The film is a dream in the making.

The child is menaced by Zo, a monster with deep eyes, a massive build and long hair. The colorful images are scary yet beautiful, and the wordless narrative is driven by that force where the conscious and the subconscious mingle. While Zo is the dominant character threatening the nearly naked child, he is joined by a cast of creepy creatures who march, move, and circle in a dance of relentless futility. Some have no heads, other no legs.

“The theme of Zo,” Wharton explains, “is the half-formed, deformed, mutilated creatures that had potential which was never realized. There is an ache of what could have been.” This theme is close to Wharton who grew up keenly aware that not everyone can realize their potential.

Take her father, as just one example. “My father entertained us by drawing,” she recalls. “He could draw a horse like Picasso, one continuous, dynamic line.” But her father went to work at the tobacco factory before graduating from high school. “He was like that line from Langston Hughes – ‘a dream deferred.’”

Beginning with a high school summer spent at North Carolina’s Governor’s School, Wharton has passionately pursued her artistic potential. She holds a BFA from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington and earned her first Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University. She is always learning, always moving, forever following her bliss. Animation incorporates what she calls her “hybrid” approach to art.

“Animation is so deceptive,” Wharton says. “It seems simple, for children, but it can contain everything. You deal with space, dimensions, rhythm, motion, movement, sound, editing, narrative structure, photography, writing and directing.”

When asked if it’s like a symphony, Wharton brightens. “Yes, only I’m the conductor and I’m playing every instrument.”

When did you realize you were going to live a creative life?

In the Governor’s School during high school. It was the first time I was immersed in an arts environment. I was from a working class family. When I attended Governor’s School I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Everything was black and white but then the doors opened to color.

Where do you find your inspiration?

Mostly from dreams. I also get ideas about movement and psychology from watching the characters in my life.

What do you do to overcome a creative block?

I haven’t scuffled with that too much. I work a lot from the subconscious. I improvise. Sometimes I will read poetry – Dante, Robert Lowell, Milton, John Donne, T. S. Elliot I also watch “Court T.V.” and that, believe it or not, can give me ideas.

What do you think of failure?

I don’t think about failure. You learn even from that. If you just do things safely, you never push boundaries and then you will fail. Failures are good – they make you grow.

What do you most admire in other artists?

People who are cutting edge. Innovators. Someone who does something utterly unique, someone like Orson Welles, or Bach.

Do you still have teachers and, if so, who are they?

I have been blessed with great teachers. I still think about my teachers and how encouraging they were. As the middle child in a dysfunctional family you can never be told enough that you are special!

What would surprise people to find out about you?

That I’m also a writer, and that I’m serious about it.