Tyler Turkle

Tyler Turkle is an artist engaged in making paintings, sculptures, films, and videos. He studied art and photography while obtaining a degree in History from Mount Union College (1970) and furthered his studies in cinematography at Kent State University (1973-74) where he worked with the acclaimed American filmmaker Richard Myers.

While at Kent State, Turkle was exposed to the avant garde/experimental films and filmmakers of the day - Myers, Bruce Conner, Stan Brakhage, Mike and George Kuchar, Jonas Mekas, Gunvor Nelson, Lenny Lipton, Ed Emshwiller, among others. Many of those filmmakers were also producing artwork in other media and Turkle began to make films within the framework of his other art projects. The idea was that films are products of the critical, artistic process just like paintings and sculpture in that they are all projects of an independent and highly personal enterprise. Turkle's main interest, then and now, is the short documentary film and video, mostly constructed around on-camera interviews. His interest in the moving image corresponds to his interest in the still image as both play back and forth across the fields of painting and sculpture. Over the last forty years, his films and videos have explored subjects as far ranging as kids playing with yo-yo's to the death of a friend, all of which are based on the working premise of one idea, one artist, working mainly alone and out of the mainstream.

Turkle's films and videos have been shown with his paintings and sculptures in museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe including the San Francisco Museum of Art, Herbert F. Johnson Museum - Cornell University, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Many of the films and videos have also been shown in film festivals including the New York Independent Filmmakers Exposition, Bellevue (WA) Film Festival, Athens International Film Festival, Penn State Film Festival, Oxford Film Festival, and the Sherwood Oaks (CA) Experimental Film Festival.

Please Note: The 3-DVD set Tyler Turkle, Films and Videos, 1973-2008 contains all Canyon Cinema listings plus All in My Background (2006), Harry Crews - Survival is Triumph Enough (2007), and chapters 1, 2, and 3 of State of Snakes (2008)

http://www.tylerturkle.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Turkle