We Start with the Things We Find: the LOT-EK Movie

Thomas Piper is an award-winning filmmaker specialized in documenting contemporary artists and designers. He has directed, photographed and/​or edited more than 25 films on painters, sculptors, photographers, architects, and writers. His most recent film, ​“Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf”, won the 2018 Polly Krakora Award for Artistry in Film from the DC Environmental Film Festival, and was in global theatrical release through the pandemic. His film, ​“Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments”, won Best Film for Television at the 2008 International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) in Montreal. As an independent producer, he was commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum to make ​“Art, Architecture, and Innovation: Celebrating the Guggenheim Museum”, a documentary marking the 50^th anniversary of the Frank Lloyd Wright museum building. His feature length documentary, ​“Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Reimagining Lincoln Center and the High Line”, was broadcast on PBS affiliates around the country, and accepted for over 25 festivals around the world. Other subjects have included the artists Julie Mehretu, Sol Lewitt, Kiki Smith, Alex Katz and Vija Celmins, the writer James Salter, the art historian Vincent Scully, the architects Peter Eisenman, Steven Holl, Jean Nouvel and Thom Mayne, and MacArthur ​“genius” grant winner, Jeanne Gang. Piper was most recently Director of Production for the Checkerboard Film Foundation, a nonprofit committed to preserving, through film and video, the first-person stories of individuals who have made important contributions to the American Arts.

Biographical notes provided by the film production team

Selected films:
Martin Puryear: Lookout (2023)
Julie Mehretu: Palimpsest (2021)
FIVE SEASONS: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf (2018)
Inventing Cornell Tech: The Vision (2015)
Eduardo de Almeida: Arquiteto da Medida Justa (2014)