Brent Green

b. 1978 · Red Hook, New York, USA

A self-taught animator who tells his handmade films live, standing beside the projector with musicians, like a campfire storyteller with power tools.

The life

Green was born in Baltimore in 1978 and taught himself filmmaking, working for years in rural Pennsylvania and now from Red Hook, New York. He makes stop-motion films with hand-built sets and carved figures, then tours them with live narration and improvised soundtracks. His 2010 feature Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then retold the true story of Leonard Wood, a Kentucky hardware clerk who built a strange, sprawling house by hand hoping it would cure his wife’s cancer. A Creative Capital grantee, Green has shown everywhere from city rooftops to MoMA, the Hammer Museum, the Walker Art Center and Sundance.

The work

Films, sculptures, drawings and live performances, all with the same whittled, hand-hammered grain. The animation is deliberately rough, the sets carpentered rather than rendered, the voice cracked and urgent. Work is held by the Museum of Modern Art, the American Folk Art Museum and the Hammer Museum.

Why we love them

He treats cinema like a barn raising: build it yourself, invite everyone, sing over the hammering. Outsider spirit with a projector.

Go deeper

• Brent Green at the Outsider Art Fair
• Andrew Edlin Gallery
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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