Interview By Larry Hertz

Jacob Rivkin ’07, an animator and interdisciplinary artist, spent time as an artist-in-residence in Catwalk’s bucolic setting in June of 2025.

Rivkin’s hand-drawn animations are featured in documentary films at the intersection of art, history, and science. These films have screened nationally on PBS’s Great Performances and at the Animation Block Party in Brooklyn, NY, and internationally at the Japan Media Arts Festival in Tokyo, the Factual Animation Film Festival in London, and the National Museum of Australia.

He is an Assistant Professor of Visual Storytelling at Kutztown University (Pennsylvania), where he teaches courses in pre-production for animation and film.

My original plan was to make a series of cyanotype animations based on compositions from Hudson River School painters and studies of natural arrangements in the landscape. Catwalk is a stone’s throw from Thomas Cole’s home and also just across the Hudson River from Olana, the former home of Frederic Church. Catwalk provided the perfect opportunity to be influenced directly by the land itself. I also wanted to have time to make small landscape paintings.

I switched gears a little. While I worked a bit on developing a process for cyanotype animation and made a few paintings of the treetops at Catwalk, I became quite inspired by the landscape at one of the local swimming holes, in the town of Leeds. My time at Catwalk was shared with three other residents, and to cool off from the heat wave, we went swimming together in Leeds several times. The hundred or so people finding moments of calm and joy among the tiered waterfalls and small wading pools felt both communal and felt very intimate. So I made a short hand-drawn digital animation based on some of my sketchbook doodles from my time there. This film, Inn at Leeds, was completed in August and screened this past fall at the Philadelphia Animation Festival in Philadelphia, PA, and the Open World Animation Festival in Northampton, PA.

I also completed the storyboard for a ten-minute narrative animated documentary titled Drawing Exercise, a project I’ve been working on since 2023. Beginning with a recorded phone call during the COVID-19 pandemic, the film traces the cultural changes to exercise routines since 1970 alongside my mother’s lung cancer diagnosis, my father’s scientific research in Antarctica, and the familiar routines that ground us in times of grief, change, and healing. The film moves back and forth between the phone call and a recorded lyrical essay, featuring small vignettes of my own relationship to family history and daily practices. I am currently in the rough animation production process.

The best thing about working at a place like Catwalk was having the gift of time and space to work creatively in a beautiful environment, among fellow passionate artists and writers. My studio was at the top of Catwalk’s tower, which had a 360-degree view of the Hudson River and beyond, and at its base were gardens and walking trails throughout the property. This was one of the most unique spaces I’ve ever worked in.

My time at Catwalk continues to inspire my work. Developing a method for making cyanotype animations at the residency has led to a recent project titled The Shape of Seeing. This is an animated short documentary film, made from cyanotypes, poetically exploring the way infants perceive the world in the first year of life.