Bio

Ruth Hayes produces animation in analog and digital media as well as flipbooks and other pre-cinema formats, investigating autobiographical, historical and experiential themes. Recent cameraless animation works, Copper Perforation Loop Triptych and Perilous Experiment, play with materiality and chance occurrences in crafting and projection. Her video of animated photographic imagery, On Our Way, is a phenomenological meditation on contrasts between wild and settled landscapes in western Washington State. Her award winning works Reign of the Dog: A Re-Visionist History and Wanda, included in the BFI’s Desire & Sexuality; Animating the Unconscious compilation, have screened and toured internationally. Ruth’s flipbooks were featured in “Daumenkino: The Flipbook Show” at the Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf and are in library collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Washington, among others. She earned her MFA in Experimental Animation from California Institute of the Arts in 1992 and currently is a member of the faculty at The Evergreen State College where she teaches animation in broadly interdisciplinary thematic courses  that, depending on the year, examine and apply animation techniques in the context of media literacy and media studies, the visual arts, history, literature and the sciences.