Candace Reckinger is a visual artist who is just as likely to be found directing on a stage as digging in her garden. She first picked up a Brownie camera to shoot a picture of the horizon on a lake when she was five years old, the same year her dad taught her how to plant a vegetable garden. She began making experimental films and videos in college and directed an experimental feminist sci-fi short "Occupied Territory" (1981) which met with acclaim at festivals in Europe and the USA including Cannes, Melbourne, Lille, and Ann Arbor.
In 1985, she teamed up with Mike Patterson to direct a string of MTV music video hits including Suzanne Vega's "Luka" which won MTV Best Female Video, Sting's "Be Still My Beating Heart" awarded Women In Film’s Best Music Video, and the Grammy winner "Opposites Attract" featuring Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat. In 2006, seven Patterson & Reckinger videos were added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. From 1996-2004, Candace was a full-time hands-on mom and gardener. In 2007, she joined the faculty of the USC School of CInematic Arts in Animation & Digital Arts.
In 2011, Candace collaborated with Mike Patterson and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas to create the animated 5-screen visualization of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition for the opening festivities of The New World Center in Miami, the world's first multi-media symphonic concert hall which was designed by Frank Gehry. She recently co-directed a multi-technique animated music video for the classic "Mr. Blue Sky" by Jeff Lynn of ELO. She began working on a multi-screen landscape series in 2009 "Paradise" which she's shooting in Midwestern prairies and lakes and on the road in coastal California.