Kudzu Kingdom

My thesis animation, Kudzu Kingdom, is an allegorical yet informative video about kudzu, the invasive vine that covers my home in Maryland. The animation follows a girl named Alice as she pursues a white butterfly into a grove of kudzu, falls down a hole, and discovers a brilliant world beneath the vine. In this world, she learns about kudzu and the native species that it shrouds.

My project is a drop in a sea of literature, poems, art, essays, and films involving kudzu, but I hope that by using a unique combination of fact and fantasy I will give viewers a version of the kudzu story that augments their ecological knowledge of kudzu and native plants without disparaging their emotional associations with the vine. Because I am covering kudzu specifically as it affects Marylanders and nature native to Maryland, I am filling a gap in the large library of art pertaining to Kudzu. While kudzu has completely consumed southern art and literature, it has yet to completely permeate mid-atlantic Maryland’s artistic archives. My animation will be part of an emerging Northern voice in the conversation about kudzu.