As a multidisciplinary artist, Jeff Scher (b.1954) intertwines his assemblage of creative passions—including filmmaking, animation and painting—to construct distinctive, layered animations. Through the use of lights, abstractions and visual effects—often combined with music—Scher has created a multitude of short, experimental films he calls “animated still lives.” His films incorporate a variety of fluctuating drawings, paintings, collages and other images to create dense, concise visual poems. The ever-changing, overlapping colors, textures, images and occasional text create uniquely mesmerizing, multi-sensory experiences.

Now based in New York City, Scher attended Bard College, graduating in 1976. His films have been shown around the world and some of his works are in permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Academy Film Archives, the Austrian National Archive, Centre Pompidou and the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. Scher has also directed music videos for artists such as Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, and has created commissioned work for HBO, PBS, Nickelodeon and many other cable and television networks. Scher teaches graduate courses at The School of Visual Arts New York City, and is an animation instructor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. – Alexandra Vasile

About the Collection

The majority of this collection was donated by the artist in 2015. A list of titles in the collection can be found at this link in the Harvard Library catalog.

A number of Scher's films are available on the artist's Vimeo page.