You’ve probably figured out by now that I’m Casey, and I’m some kind of image and moving image artist or maker of some kind. And honestly, I think if you walked away from this site with just that information, then I’ve done my job. The specifics of how I came to be who I am feel less important to me — but since you’re still here and still reading, I’m happy to fill in some gaps.

I started making videos back in high school, it just made sense to me in a way few things do as a teenager, so I kept going — credit also to a truly incredible teacher, Tom Reid, who lowered every possible barrier, giving a group of teens absolute freedom to make. A feeling none of us had experienced before.

I ended up attending Massart for a dual major in Film/Video and Studio for Interrelated Media. If you’re not familiar with SIM, it is a self-directed program modeled after Black Mountain College, encouraging its members to pursue artforms that land in the liminal space between traditional forms. I frequently found myself enabling my friends’ wildest attempts at creating art — this led me to appreciate the beauty in collaboration and empowerment that teams provide. We would try to make feature films in an afternoon, put on plays from the edge of scaffolding, constructed electronic puzzles, and on one occasion nearly stuck myself with pneumonia, baking bread in an outdoor oven in -30° temperatures for the Bread and Puppet Theater.

Towards the end of my time there, I applied for a temp Production Assistant position at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University — what I thought would be a summer gig turned first into my first full time job after graduation. Eventually becoming the Learning Lab Studio Coordinator and later Studio Manager, I’ve found my match in consistently wild challenges. During my time here, I’ve learned to weld, metal fabrication, motion graphics, 3D modeling, elements of game design, Javascript, Python, Tensorflow’s computer vision tools, how to manage a small team, and just about every on-set production challenge under the sun. The Learning Lab is an R&D space that is tasked with helping faculty at Harvard that are looking to do something unusual with media. Which means we tend to get every niche request anyone can come up with, and our team is uniquely inclined to help fulfill them.

Somewhere in the middle of my time at the Learning Lab, I’ve found myself within a fantastic community of artists, who are always looking to make inspiring and sometimes strange films — which I am always excited to oblige. One of these occasions ended up in a near 5 year project(extended by the pandemic) with a good friend of mine, Lilly Dickinson, in which we produced a micro-budget feature film, the Making of a Deathbed. It was one of the greatest learning experiences of my entire life and find myself overcome frequently with pride in what we made.