Michael Covello and Elizabeth Schneider have worked as a collaborative since 2016, developing their language in video, audio, and animation in tandem with advancing their painterly dialogue. They met as undergrads at Cornell University, studying printmaking and painting. Their experimental art-animations investigate humanity’s intricate relationship with nature by combining autobiographical and shared experiences, navigating the shifting boundaries between humanity and the natural world through text, sound, and image. Landscape is not a backdrop for human-centered stories. Instead, their work depicts clashing agendas, reciprocal traumas, and an uncertain terrain populated by magic and science, memory and dream.
Michael Covello
Michael Covello creates animations, paintings, drawings, prints, site-specific installations, videos, and audio work. He received his BFA from the School of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University and his MFA in Transdisciplinary Art at the University of South Florida. Covello has been twice nominated by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for awards and exhibitions and is the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Arts Council of Hillsborough County and a grant from the Vermont Studio Center. He has been a featured artist in two publications of New American Paintings. His collaborative animations have been screened at the 2019 Los Angeles International Film Festival’s IndieShortFest, where he was nominated for Best Audio Mixing, and the 2019 Director’s Circle Festival of Shorts.
Elizabeth Schneider
Elizabeth Schneider received her BFA from Cornell University, with a focus on painting and printmaking, and she received her MFA from the University of South Florida, a transdisciplinary art program, focusing on painting and animation. She is an internationally exhibiting contemporary artist, recently participating in exhibitions in Philadelphia, Asheville, and Virginia, including “Through These Eyes” at the Torpedo Factory Art Center. Her collaborative animations have been screened at film festivals around the world including the London Independent Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Buffalo International Film Festival, the Sydney Underground Film Festival, the New York Independent Cinema Awards (awarded Best Animation in 2021), and the Amsterdam International Short Film Festival (awarded Best Animation in 2021). Schneider has received numerous grants and awards, such as the Charles Baskerville Painting Award and an Opportunity Grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has attended the 77 Arts Residency, Wassaic Projects Family Residency, and the Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences Artist Residency. In 2023, she was awarded a fellowship for a Vermont Studio Center Residency and an Artist Residency at PLAYA.
CANDLE FLY FILMS 