Larry Janiak

Larry Janiak (born 15 February 1938) is an American filmmaker, animator and designer. Janiak was born in Chicago, Illinois and attended Lane Technical College Prep High School where he collaborated with Wayne Boyer and Ronald Larson to create animated cartoon shorts. These high school films were recognized by the Chicago Tribune, Hollywood and the IIT Institute of Design. Janiak then attended the Institute of Design and learned under the influence of László Moholy-Nagy's principles of the "American Bauhaus". After school, Janiak began work in advertising, where he employed these principles of design, and the experimental practices he learned at Institute of Design in his industrial filmmaking. Janiak not only made advertising films, he also created documentaries, experimental films, animations, graphic design pieces, and worked as a professor at the Institute of Design from 1968 to 1980. Much of his work was inspired by his spiritual practices with the Vivekananda Vedanta Society in Chicago, which he was a member of beginning in 1965.

Early years Larry Janiak was born on February 15, 1938, and grew up in both the southwest and northwest side of Chicago. When Larry was six, his family moved to a northwest neighborhood of Chicago, close to the Indian Boundary Forest Preserve, the Che-Che-Pin-Qua Woods and the Des Plaines River. Larry attended Lane Tech High School, where he would begin filmmaking.

At Lane Tech High School, Larry created cartoon animations with Wayne Boyer and Ronald Larson, which would catch the attention of the Chicago Tribune, and even Hollywood. The high school students found inspiration in nature, experimenting with stop motion photography in the nearby woods during their summers. They honed their camera skills, and then began the process of creating drawn animation. Their final project consisted of roughly 200,000 drawings.

At the Institute of Design, Larry was taught printmaking by Misch Kohn, a world renowned artist whose etching and prints were displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as in Paris, Stockholm and London. While at I.D., Janiak worked for Richard Kliedon Animation studio. At Goldsholl Associates, Janiak was at home with other I.D. graduates who also learned from the design principles of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Their common backgrounds contributed to a highly experimental design studio unlike many others in Chicago at the time, where the use of montage, collage, and light experimentation was encouraged. The studio created advertisements for companies such as Kimberly-Clark. Peter Gorner interviewed Larry Janiak for his article "Tempo A" in the Chicago Tribune, and discusses the tedious nature, and lengthy process that animation requires. One of Janiak's students worked for four years on only a 30 minute long animation.

Life and Film (1965) is an experimental film that functions as a "picture postcard", depicting the experience of young filmmakers walking along a path in the Michigan sand dunes. The film is set to Gamelan, music traditional to the Vivekananda Vedanta Society.

2013 AMIA Archival Screening Night, Byrd Theatre

2014 City to See, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Kinosonik #2, Black Cinema House

2015 LLife & Film: Larry Janiak, Anthology Film Archives Wayne Boyer and Larry Janiak: Camera and Line, Gene Siskel Film Center

2017 Art Basel Miami Screening: The Reflection in the Puddle is Mine, Art Basel Miami

2018 Personal Legacies: Materiality and Abstraction, Chicago Cultural Center