Joanna Priestley

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Joanna Priestley is an award-winning, independent animator and teacher. She currently resides in Portland, Oregon.

She trained for printmaking at Rhode Island School of Design and received a BFA in painting from UC Berkley, graduating with honors. In addition, she received an MFA in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts. She was mentored under Jules Engel.

During her career, she has produced and directed over 19 animated films, most of which have been screened at film festivals worldwide. Her work has also been broadcast on PBS and the BBC. In addition, she has done animation pieces for Sesame Street as well as for music videos for Tears for Fears, and Joni Mitchell.

In 1988, after graduating from CalArts, she returned to Portland to fund with the help of her friends, "ASIFA-Northwest", the ASIFA chapter in the Northwest region of the United States which was comprised of Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver B.C. and the cities in between. It is now known as ASIFA-Seattle.

She is an ardent proponent of animation as an art form and has presented papers at the Society for Animation Studies Conference and works to improve the status of animation in academia, museums, galleries and the media worldwi

Her influences include Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye, Norman McLaren and Jules Engel.

She has taught at Art Institute of Portland, Pacific Northwest College of Art,Northwest Film Center/Portland Art Museum and Volda College.

[edit] Personal Life

She is married to animation television show director, Paul Harrod. Among her hobbies outside animation, she enjoys gardening, herbalism, and Burning Man.