Joanna Priestley

Joanna Priestley has directed, animated and produced 32 films, including the abstract animated feature, North of Blue, and Clam Bake, an iOS app. Her work maintains a high level of porosity between serious exploration of boundaries and intuitive whimsy and she is dedicated to experimentation in technique, theme and content. Priestley has had retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw, Poland), British Film Institute (London), American Cinematheque (Los Angeles, CA), Hiroshima Animation Festival (Japan), Jenju International Film Festival (Korea), Stuttgart Animation Festival (Germany) and Fantoche International Animation Festival (Baden, Switzerland) and she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, the MacDowell Colony, Fundación Valparaíso and Creative Capital. Priestley was founding president of ASIFA Northwest and has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1992, where she annually juries the Academy Awards, Student Academy Awards and the Nicholl Screenplay Fellowships. Priestley's work has been shown on both PBS and the BBC and she has directed "Sesame Street" films and segments of music videos for Tears for Fears ("Sowing the Seeds of Love") and Joni Mitchell ("Good Friends"). Priestley is the founding president of ASIFA-Northwest, and she runs an apprenticeship program through her studio in Portland, Oregon. Her teaching credentials include instructor at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Northwest Film Center/Portland Art Museum and Volda University College (Høgskulen i Volda, Norway). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, Creative Capital (New York, NY) and the Regional Arts and Culture Council (Portland, OR). Priestley studied painting and printmaking at Rhode Island School of Design and at UC Berkeley, where she received a Bachelor of Arts Degree with Honors. Priestley also attended California Institute of the Arts where she received an MFA Degree and the Louis B. Mayer Award. She also enjoys medicinal herbalism, gardening and Burning Man.