21 March 30th–april 5th, 2023 phoenixnewtimes.com phoenix new Times | cONTeNTs | feeDBacK | OPiNiON | NeWs | feaTuRe | NighT+Day | culTuRe | film | cafe | music | Life on Film Phoenix filmmaker Preston Zeller tackles love, loss, and painting in The Art of Grieving. BY CHRIS COPLAN T he loss of a loved one can change the very DNA of daily life. Whether it’s from a long illness or a sudden accident, the seemingly endless deluge of grief, uncertainty, and listlessness can be devastating. For Preston Zeller, he made it through thanks to the power of his art. Flashback to 2017, and Zeller’s older brother, Colin, died of a drug overdose. To help cope, Zeller began his own extended mourning process by painting. Artistic expression, he said, has always been an integral part of his daily life. “I went to film school at Chapman University in California,” Zeller says. “I’ve been making films in various shapes and sizes for a long time, whether that’s R-rated films or commercial-type films.” His colorful, formless works of abstract gave him an outlet for the wellspring of ideas and emotions he grappled with on the daily. In all, he’d paint one new piece for a full 365 days. “The thing about abstract [art] that I’ve always enjoyed, and this is to your point, is that it’s not a single, literal snapshot in time,” Zeller says. “You’re creating a sense of someone when they were 10 years old, or you’re capturing a landscape before it burned down.” Yet when he stared upon his collected works — what ended up being a “10-foot by 20-foot mosaic,” Zeller says — he still felt as if there was something more to do. “I got this huge collection of paintings and I have these visions of what I want to do,” Zeller says. “And so I remember staring at them at one point and saying, ‘Hey, what if we hung them up?’” That idea would eventually transform into The Art of Grieving, a 70-minute docu- mentary that follows Zeller and his family and friends in finishing the art and arranging the sizable mosaic, which even- tually hung in his former Texas home. (Zeller relocated to Gilbert for work and family after wrapping the film.) Since the documentary debuted in 2021, it’s won three awards for Best Documentary at national film festivals. (That’d be Bridge Film Fest, Los Angeles Film Awards, and Love Wins Film Festival, plus some honor- able mentions elsewhere.) It’s currently available on the free streaming service Tubi, and is also set to debut on Amazon Prime this July and Apple TV before the year’s end. It doesn’t take long into the film itself before you realize why it’s resonated with so many people in so many ways. “There’s this old friend of mine who teaches film, and he’s done a lot of documen- tary work,” Zeller says. “He brought up this notion of how this documentary is going to appeal to several different audiences. There’s this personal contemporary view, this contemporary view of mental health, and then there’s this historical look at it all.” The one cohesive thread, though? “Grieving is definitely not something that anyone thinks about until you have to go through it,” Zeller says. The historical aspect, Zeller says, saw him researching and exploring art history. During that period, he says he came about a similar pattern when it came to artists, famous and lesser-known, tackling the subjects of death and grief. There were seemingly countless portraits exploring these ideas across time, cultures, and artistic approaches. “The history piece kind of gives it all context,” he says. “Like, why would I be doing this? Have other people done this before? So I started researching, and there’s all these interesting use cases. And there was a catharsis in there for me.” He adds, “It’s actually trippy just how many people are actually artists, and I call this out in the documentary, who didn’t paint about death or anything like that before. Then they did a similar thing I did, and they started talking about it. For me, it weaves this thread that, as long back as we could really tell, people have probably used some form of [art] to try to understand [grief] their own way, and that it’s not a novel thing. It’s people doing art because of what it potentially did for them.” That historical bent also touches on religious practices and lineages. Zeller, who comes from “somewhat of a Christian background,” also used the film to delve into his own beliefs. “I went back and read parts of Scripture in light of it all. And [grief’s] all over the Bible,” he says. “I just never read it in that ▼ Culture Preston Zeller Preston Zeller at work on a piece of his mosaic. >> p23
