Riana & Bridget Johnson

Bio (provided by artists): Riana and Bridget are sisters who grew up in the Southwest as actresses, painters, playwrights, and imagination cultivators. In their adult lives they have gone on to work together in their artistic pursuits through filmmaking and animation. Riana is a painter; Bridget is a filmmaker. Together they meld these skills to create strange and beautiful amalgams that celebrate story and art.

Website, Instagram: @potatotacofilms

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We seek to tell the stories of our Mexican-Arizonan family to shed light on the complex history surrounding the border. Our mixed-medium project unveils the long history of institutionalized racism against the Brown people in Southern Arizona through a celebration of the unique culture of Mexican-Americans living in Clifton, Arizona. We use archival photos, watercolor puppets, stop motion, and digital animation to portray the dream-like nostalgia of the oral history of our relatives living in Clifton. We embrace collage and the time-bending power of storytelling to invite our audience into this remote town. This film gives the audience a peek into our family while confirming that these are stories we all share. “Girls in Serapes, or How to Walk Up a Hill Without Taking a Step,” is a cheeky tale about our family matriarch and a clandestine walk up a very steep hill.

ARTIST STATEMENT

“Girls in Serapes, or, How to Walk up a Hill Without Taking a Step,” stop motion animation, digital animation, watercolor, collage, 2019

We seek to tell the stories of our Mexican-Arizonan family to shed light on the complex history surrounding the border. Our mixed-medium project unveils the long history of institutionalized racism against the Brown people in Southern Arizona through a celebration of the unique culture of Mexican-Americans living in Clifton, Arizona.

We use archival photos, watercolor puppets, stop motion, and digital animation to portray the dream-like nostalgia of the oral history of our relatives living in Clifton. We embrace collage and the time-bending power of storytelling to invite our audience into this remote town. This film gives the audience a peek into our family while confirming that these are stories we all share. “Girls in Serapes, or How to Walk Up a Hill Without Taking a Step,” is a cheeky tale about our family matriarch and a clandestine walk up a very steep hill.