Ed Emshwiller

Born in Lansing, Michigan of Germanic descent, he graduated from the University of Michigan in 1947, and then studied at École des Beaux Arts (1949–50) in Paris with his wife, novelist Carol Emshwiller (née Fries), whom he married on August 30, 1949. He also studied at the Art Students League of New York (1950–51). From 1951 to 1979, while living in Levittown, New York, Emshwiller created covers and interior illustrations for dozens of science fiction paperbacks and magazines, notably Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He debuted in the pulp magazines with about 50 interior illustrations and four cover paintings for the May to December 1951 issues of Galaxy, a monthly edited by H. L. Gold. In that year or 1952 he also did his first book cover for the U.S. paperback edition of Odd John (Galaxy Publishing Corp.). In 1964, a Ford Foundation grant allowed Emshwiller to pursue his interest in film. Active in the New American Cinema movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, he created multimedia performance pieces and did cine-dance, experimental films, and documentaries: “Time of the Heathen” (1964), “Relativity” (1966), “The Streets of Greenwood”, “Dont Look Back” (1967) etc.

His films of the 1960s were mostly shot in 16mm color, and some of these included double exposures created simply by rewinding the cameras. He was one of the earliest video artists. With “Scape-Mates” (1972), he began his experiments in video, combining computer animation with live-action. In 1979, he produced “Sunstone”, a groundbreaking three-minute 3-D computer-generated video made at the New York Institute of Technology with Alvy Ray Smith. In 1987, he created his electronic video opera, Hunger, for the 1987 Los Angeles Arts Festival, in partnership with composer Morton Subotnick. Emshwiller died of cancer on July 27, 1990, in Valencia, California, where he was cremated. His papers are archived at the California Institute of Arts.

Sources: Fluidr, Pulp Artist (David Saunders 2009)