All Flesh Is Grass

“Susan Oxtoby’s film “All Flesh Is Grass” is one of the most aptly tragic visions of life-on-earth I’ve recently seen – one of the most perfect step-printed hand-held (hold your hand’s eye) pain’s taking orders-of-metaphor perhaps yet created through any conscious arrangement of symbols inasmuch as Susan evolves much of the aesthetic of Arthur Lipsett free of his symbolic cynicism; and she holds the camera personally to her ‘heart’ in a way Joseph Cornell would have, I’m sure, had he been able to work with the camera directly: in other words she has not distanced herself by using ‘found footage’ and/or by directing other’s camera work in the making of these visions, but has rather followed the trail of images close to her heart clear through every disjunct of step-print and edit of thought along a line of simple (and simply) human empathy at-(metaphorical)-large.” – Stan Brakhage This film is dedicated to the memory of the filmmaker’s mother, who died in 1980 after a three-year battle with cancer.