Art

Class Act.

Late spring is an inspiring time on any university campus. At an art school, graduation season is the moment to reveal your pièce de résistance: a definitive work that will launch your creative career. When production started on our latest online recruitment campaign for Santa Fe University of Art and Design last May, several of our subjects were preparing for takeoff. Their incredible energy inspired us to produce our own magnum opus that tells the story of music student Rachel Dupard. Rachel was finishing up her junior year when we captured her story, but she was already well on her way to an incredible entertainment career….

Studio Secrets.

“Some of these are from 1985 and 1986. This one’s from 1988,” says Ron Pokrasso, rifling through a flat file in one corner of Timberwick Studios. “This gives you an idea of the span of the show.” Ron’s 1,180-square-foot studio is tucked along a meandering dirt road between Santa Fe and Eldorado. Over the last eight years, this place has been the artist’s laboratory for aesthetic experimentation and his classroom for a community of printmakers from across the world. As his new studio rises in downtown Santa Fe, he’s preparing to open Timberwick to the public one last time. Ron gave us a sneak peek at over three decades…

From a Northern Song to The Last Emperor.

A lot can change in a thousand years. So, when the Asian Art Museum asked us to depict over a millennium of Chinese history with a video installation, we saw it as a chance to start thinking on a fresh time scale. Earlier this year we teamed up with our friends at the San Francisco museum in anticipation of their current exhibition Emperors’ Treasures. In this exhibit, exquisite artworks and personal possessions are on display, passed down throughout many dynasties of Chinese history dating back as far as 960 C.E. We begin with the Northern Song dynasty ruled by Emperor Huizong, a master calligrapher. Ultimately we…

Down the Rabbit Hole.

“Maybe if I were the original Alice in Wonderland and fell through the rabbit hole… that would be something like this,” said a visitor to Meow Wolf‘s House of Eternal Return. We spent an afternoon interviewing brave explorers inside the art collective’s massive, mysterious art complex, and never heard the same description twice. The two-story Victorian house with portals to elaborate art installations has taken the world by storm, most recently appearing in the Los Angeles Times. The reporter wrote: The name Meow Wolf alludes to the unique nature of what a visitor brochure describes as an “art complex.” Adjectives such as…

Creative Fusion.

Tung Chiang’s passion for ceramics runs deep. Even in his years working as a graphic designer and advertiser, he would spend late nights throwing pottery. He officially transitioned from 2D designer to 3D artist, and has since taken the helm of San Francisco’s Heath Ceramics as their director. His sunlit, second-floor office on 18th street is full of kilns, vast work tables, and beautiful pottery in various states of completion. As we learned in a recent video project with Tung, turning his hobby into a profession has only increased his passion for the process. “When you let the clay throw on the wheel,…

Work Hard. Play Hard.

Google and The Clash have more in common than you might expect. They both started in a garage, and had rockstar ambitions that launched them into the stratosphere. When Google Play got in touch with 12FPS in 2011, we were surprised that the Fortune 500 company had managed to preserve the spirit of a DIY punk venue. The digital distribution platform tapped us to produce a series of one-off music videos with top artists. They wanted to capture the sort of deep cuts that diehard fans seek out, in intimate settings that would foster candid experimentation. Our initial work with Google Play was at Studio…

Hero’s Journey.

Every video starts with a script, and this one was our Odyssey. Santa Fe University of Art and Design challenged us to show off the Desert Southwest’s natural beauty for its spring recruitment campaign. We dreamed up an action-packed profile of a SFUAD student, with mountain hikes, snowboarding runs and a breathtaking aerial of Diablo Canyon. After selecting outstanding film student Austin as our star, we interviewed him to craft compelling voiceover for the script. It was finally time to turn words into actions. In this production, each line of the shot list was a crazy physical challenge. “Drone shot of car headed up Artist Road” called for sharp aerial reflexes and…

Eternal Return.

To describe Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return in a single word is impossible. It’s bigger than “massive,” even more detailed than “intricate” or “complex,” and more wondrous than “incredible” would suggest. It’s so hard to sum up, in fact, that we were tongue tied after the opening gala of the Santa Fe art collective’s new installation. Adam broke the stunned silence with his own playful account of the evening: I stood on the front lawn of an elegant Victorian house, under an oddly starless night sky. The two-story dwelling was aglow, and shadowy figures flitted in and out of view in the upstairs windows. The doormat read “Beyond…

Ordinary Magic.

“It’s important to do art,” says Josh Daniel. “It should be something that… you need to do.” Josh has been working in San Francisco for a little over a decade, which is quite a feat considering the significant changes the city has experienced in that time. As the cost of living rises exponentially, artists are leaving neighborhoods that they helped nurture and beautify for decades. You’d never guess this was the case by following Josh around the city. He has a happy-go-lucky way of meandering from the art supply store to his printmaking studio, finding inspiration for sketches and screen prints in everyday life. Check…

Create With Purpose

As artists, we are constantly inspired to create impact: on the world, on fellow artists, and on ourselves. This desire to make a difference through creativity, to put momentum behind ideas, has guided every 12FPS project since before we officially existed! In 2006, the Adobe Foundation launched its flagship program, Adobe Youth Voices. Its goal was to ignite creativity in young artists around the world by working with educators and providing them resources for rich digital storytelling. Through a stroke of serendipity, our founder Adam Shaening-Pokrasso struck up a fantastic partnership with AYV that has helped shape our story and values….

The Collective Next Door.

Ever heard of Meow Wolf? Prepare for your mind to be blown. The Santa Fe art collective is championed by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, and has appeared in the New York Times and the The Guardian. In February 2015, the latter wrote an article about Meow Wolf’s biggest project in its 8-year history: When Meow Wolf members first set foot in the defunct bowling alley that will become the House of Eternal Return, the place was full of dust and debris, including the desiccated corpse of a bird – a bad omen if there ever was one. But there were good omens, too:…