Watch the entire film below. The wonderful, bizarre, and wordless film by Jan Svankmejer is streaming on youtube. The film is comprised of a number of vignettes or portraits of people indulging in the most absurd fetishes. It’s very fun and a must-see.

I’m really digging these shadowy forecasts of small town life. Ganske breaks the mundane by bringing inscrutable detail to each piece, while placing semi-abstracted shadows across the land to both create composition and re-contextualize the view

Micah Ganske

“I think [illustrator] is a term that people use because it’s a style of, like, pens and paper. If you’re not painting, you’re illustrating because you’re drawing,” Mel describes, “But, I think illustration is a really hard thing to do, first of all. It’s meant to play a role with words and text or to illustrate an idea–those elements. I think I have an illustrative style, but I think after awhile of fighting that feeling of what is it, how is it defined, or where it belongs, [I see] my images might be illustrative in style but they belong on their own.”

Her excelling and truly becoming a full-time artist is a product of her moving to Los Angeles in a lot of ways, as opposed to staying in New York. “First of all, I couldn’t afford not to work at a restaurant or anything like that,” she says of living in New York, “I would come home and work at my desk and draw all the time–but the box you live in pushes you out because you want to go outside. And the hustle and bustle drives you out because you want to soak in the awesomeness. I think it’s the best place in the world: it’s my favorite when I go back! I always cry getting back on the plane because I hate leaving. It’s an incredible place…but, I couldn’t flourish there. I couldn’t get anything done. I couldn’t find focus–and my happiest is when I’m on a roll and I’m focused. It’s momentum. When I’m on it, I don’t want to leave the house. It’s not like I’m in a dark corner, it’s the best feeling–and I found that in LA.”

Mel Kadel in PRISM index #2
Mel Kadel Official Site

Read the whole interview at LA I’m Yours

HTML Giant has a nice little post on PRISM index #2.