Director and Animator, Rose Bond.

"I've always drawn horses," says the reserved yet captivating Rose Bond, an award-winning animator from Portland, Oregon. "Teachers picked out my horse drawings to hold up. In kindergarten, at a back-to-school night, all my horse drawings were up on one board--which I thought was a little unfair to the other children." But no matter how embarrassed she might have been for being singled out, Bond remembers with fondness the affect it had on her mother. When she walked in the room and saw Rose's drawings, Bond's mother sighed and said, "Oh, those horses!"

Mrs. Bond's reaction is one that has been shared by many when first introduced to her daughter's animated shorts. Bond's horses have a mythical presence, as if they reside at once between two planes--the reality we know and the reality of Faerie. Bond's major films are based on the myths and legends of pre-Christian Ireland, a time when the world of Faerie and the powers of witchcraft were considered a part of every day life.

Says Bond of her stories, "The pre-Christian Irish had a very non-Western pantheon of gods. They believed you could be walking past a hillside and if it happened to be the hundredth day past a certain stage of the moon, for instance, you could slip into another dimension. For them there was little difference between gods and mortals." Bond also emphasizes a strong connection for the early Irish between humans and nature, a connection that allows for shape shifting and metamorphosis, a process that Bond has always been drawn to animate.

But Bond's films are about more than just beautiful horses changing into other animal forms. They address universal topics affecting humanity today through legends of the past. Bond's oeuvre questions the importance of a dominate system of power. Should men rule over women? Should women rule over men? Is there another middle-ground or middle-way?

The Light of Inspiration
In her epic trilogy of three Irish legends, Cerridwen's Gift, (1987), Mallacht Macha (or Macha's Curse, 1990) and Deirdre's Choice (1995), heroines struggle with a world that is shape shifting itself, moving from a matriarchal to patriarchal base. The white witch Cerridwen, whose daughter is pure and bright, attempts to bestow the light of inspiration upon her troubled and disagreeable son. Her potion boils in a cauldron for one year, but just as it is ready, it bubbles over and splatters the lips of her servant boy. Enraged, thinking that the boy has spoiled the potion, Cerridwen begins a marvelous chase after the frightened servant, in which both change shapes between animals of land, sea and sky. The boy makes the unwitting mistake of shifting into the form of a small seed which Cerridwen, in the shape of a hen, promptly eats. The seed grows in her belly until she bears a child that has the glow of inspiration on his brow. When the child grows to manhood and becomes known as prophet he remembers Cerridwen, the mother of knowledge who delivered upon him the light of the world.

In Macha's Curse, the goddess appears in the form of a gray mare and discovers a handsome man living alone in her woods. She takes on human form and weds the man, but bids him never say anything of it to other mortals. At a festival, the man boasts that his wife can run faster than all the horses of the King. Insulted, the King arrests the man and sends his men to find the offensive woman, the goddess Macha, who is now pregnant by her man. The King demands that the woman, even in her burdened condition, run against his horses. Macha does so and wins the race but curses the men of the village for nine generations with the weakness of a mother in labor. It is their just due for choosing a "king's might over a mother's right."