Experimental film artist, animator and sculptor Janelle VanderKelen will give a lecture Wednesday, Jan. 28, at 5 p.m. to accompany her exhibit on display in the Paul Mesaros Gallery at the WVU Canady Creative Arts Center. After the talk, a reception will officially open VanderKelen’s exhibit, which features her films “Language Unknown” (2022), “A Valley Without Trees” (2021), “Niches” (2024) and “Vignettes” (2024).
“There’s a model of visual language that has developed in Hollywood over the last century, and it’s a language we’ve now grown up knowing how to speak. As an experimental filmmaker, I’m interested in using sound and image in ways we may not expect with standard narrative film,” said VanderKelen, who is an assistant professor in the School of Art at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
While she has exhibited her work and given lectures at other universities, this is the first time she’s paired the two together, giving an artist talk to an audience about her work on display. Good art, she said, doesn’t need the maker to explain it. That said, she’s excited to give folks the metaphorical VIP tour of her exhibition.
“There are always stories and anecdotes that the artist can give, and I’m thrilled to be able to expound upon visitors’ experience of the show, and to get to hear their thoughts,” VanderKelen said.
Her solo exhibition at the Paul Mesaros Gallery focuses on possible interspecies language models and speculates how plants might approach communicating with humans.
Her short films reimagine relationships between imperfect bodies (human, vegetal, geological or otherwise), using 16mm film to replicate the way humans perceive the world and stop-motion and time-lapse techniques to make the agency and movement of plants visible for human audiences.
“We're surrounded by a big, wonderful world that's way more spectacular than I think we ever give it credit for, because we're coming from a very human-centric view of things,” she said.
She uses the camera as a “sensory prosthetic,” she said, the same way scientists use telescopes to see far away bodies in space or microscopes to view the tiniest organisms. Time-lapse allows her to speed up or slow down the recordings of the plants’ natural movements.
“The time lapse in my film is all about letting the plants or the fungi do what they want,” VanderKelen said. “It's very collaborative, and I'm kind of stepping back as the maker and saying, ‘Here, plant, you have control.’”
Sometimes, however, she has to help the plants tell their stories, moving plant bodies a little at a time, frame by frame. In “Language Unknown,” one of the films being shown in the Paul Mesaros Gallery, VanderKelen uses stop-motion to show an orchid’s roots growing into a fake human ear lying on the soil.
“Because orchid roots don't grow that fast, I had to exert some intention there, and just very minimally move these roots bit by bit,” she said.
A still image of orchid roots growing over a prosthetic ear from VanderKelen's short film "Language Unknown."
“Stop motion is an exercise for me to observe the movement of another being in a really detailed way. I have to think about how that body functions. It's very intuitive, but there's always some sort of scientific reality or discovery that's undergirding things,” she added.
VanderKelen’s use of stop-motion isn’t limited to moving her subject. When she was filming in the Grand Canyon in Summer 2025, she moved the camera instead of manipulating individual objects.
“I wanted the audience to be more aware of how their bodies were moving through this space that we all have seen a billion times. It was meant to emphasize change over time and awareness of your relation to other things in this immense and beautiful space,” she said.
VanderKelen will be the first to admit that the animations can get weird, but that’s also the point.
“We stream documentaries all the time, so we go into an environmental film expecting to know what we’re going to get. I like to use things like disgust and discomfort, because that weirdness stops the viewer and slows them down. It’s a stoppage where the audience is like, ‘Wait, I thought I knew what was going on, but do I? Let’s lean in a little closer and see.’”
Much like a documentarian, though, VanderKelen puts a lot of research into her work, reading the latest hypotheses, keeping abreast of what scientists are excited about and interviewing experts. For example, she’s been researching cyborg botany, which combines plants and technology, such as adding microchips or other sensory inputs to plant roots to help advance soil sciences.
“Why are we reinventing the wheel, trying to create these probes or these other sensory devices when we could just augment and collaborate with the thing that's already really good at it?” she said.
After learning more about cyborg botany, VanderKelen decided she loved the concept and wanted to do more than simply play out what we were already seeing. Rather, she wanted to carry it to a natural conclusion, using a speculative narrative model to explore what could be and of what, perhaps, science is not yet aware.
“A Valley Without Trees” is a prime example, she said, of how a research rabbit hole spun out into a short film. Cyborg botany’s concept of augmenting and using plant roots inspired her to tell a story from the point of view of an onion, which spends most of its life underground, making the onion a literal interpreter to help bridge the space between humans and the landscape and even the stars.
“Those are the two prongs of my process. One is just the obsession forming, and then the other is the relationship-building with the people who are conducting actual lab-based research and finding out these wonderful things. Then I interpret it in weird ways, because I'm an artist,” VanderKelen said.
A still image from VanderKelen's short film "Language Unknown."
In addition to interspecies communication, VanderKelen’s art focuses on decentering the human to allow nature to teach us about being human.
“Niches” was filmed at an artists’ colony in Spain and was initially inspired by a fellow artist who went out every day to do yoga with the ants.
“I was enamored with that idea, that ants, while going about their work, could be teaching a human about patience as they're moving their body, or about consistency. Or giving information about the landscape, like that there is a divot here that you might want to avoid,” VanderKelen said.
“‘Niches’ developed as a series of vignettes where humans were not cast as the teachers or arbiters of wisdom, but instead they were looking to things like ants, or cats, or limes, or dry riverbeds to teach them truths about the world,” she added.
The final set of films on display, “Vignettes,” came out of the research she was doing for her feature-length film “The Golden Thread,” which is about a 12th century abbess, scientist and proto-naturalist who thought about the natural world not only in terms of healing, but also in terms of how humans ethically relate to nature.
“In the Middle Ages, people were regularly expecting the apocalypse to occur, and there’s a deep sadness and anxiety that pervades the 21st century regarding what the future will look like for humans,” VanderKelen said. “I was interested in the mirroring happening between these two time periods.”
The visual language of “Vignettes” echoes the way plants and nature were portrayed in 12th- to 15th-century illuminated manuscripts, such as the way vine-like tendrils would trail alongside and between the text.
“We get the term ‘vignettes’ from these beautiful, curlicue leaf-like motifs that separated the page and organized how we read visual information. In thinking about fragmentation and a three-panel piece, I liked the idea of using plants as an organizational factor,” she said.
“Vignettes” was originally designed to be shown on three close screens, like a traditional triptych, but VanderKelen is using the Paul Mesaros Gallery as an experimental space to see how the three films work if separated.
“I teach at the University of Tennessee, and I see a lot of students who want to get it right on the first try, which is basically impossible in art,” she said.
In her teaching and practice, she emphasizes that no piece will ever be perfect.
“I’m trying to do something impossible,” she said. “I’m trying to make a film from the vantage point of an inhuman entity, using language in different ways while still being comprehensible. So in every piece, I have to assess and acknowledge what worked and what didn’t and resolve to try again in the next one.”
“I want folks to embrace error as something that isn’t a catastrophe,” she continued. “Maybe we can be kinder to ourselves as creatives.”
Students, especially, should give themselves some grace, VanderKelen said. There’s so much pressure on traditional students—those 18- to 21-year-olds—to pick a major and a path in life, but sometimes people need the room to explore.
“In undergrad, I thought I was going to be an artist or pre-med, since I loved science and came in with credits. But I wasn’t necessarily interested in what a degree in science would lead to, because I wanted to think about how we culturally engage with science. Arts and humanities allowed me to do that,” she said.
A still image from VanderKelen's film "The Golden Thread."
She advocates exploring options and interests without viewing it as lost time.
“I ran through a gamut of media before settling on things that worked for me. Every experience gives you a tool for your toolkit,” she said.
VanderKelen will talk more about her art and her creative process during the Visiting Artist Lecture Jan. 28 at 5 p.m. in the Bloch Learning and Performance Hall at the WVU Canady Creative Arts Center.
A reception will follow in the CCAC’s Douglas O. Blaney Lobby, where attendees can meet the artist, view her works in the gallery and enjoy refreshments.
VanderKelen’s short film, “Ecologies and Terrains,” was featured in the 2025 WV Mountaineer Short Film Festival. The 2026 WVMSFF will be March 4-8. Get more information at wvmsff.com. Learn more about the WVU School of Art and Design and future artist events at artanddesign.wvu.edu.