It may strike you as ironic that animator Helen Hill, who began creating short experimental animation films while attending Harvard University, should have devoted much of her career encouraging the development of do-it-yourself styles in which anyone can make animated films. Really, though, it’s a success story when an education at the nation’s most prestigious institute of higher learning leads not to more ivy tower academicism but instead to the spreading of art throughout the non-academic world. Hill was not the kind of artist who retreated from the world. With her husband, a doctor, she was prominent in community and social activities in the depressed New Orleans community where they lived, teaching animation, starting a local film co-op and organizing programs to get food and medical care to the poor and homeless. Her tragic and senseless murder last January, during a week of killings in New Orleans that focused national attention on the continued problems of that ruined city, will hopefully not be what she is most remembered for. Her friend Sullivan Sheehan, who has been curating Squeaky Wheel’s summer outdoor animation festival, will present a program of Hill’s work this Saturday. It is free and open to the public. Cotton candy, a favorite image in her films, will be served up as well.

Saturday, July 21 at 9pm. Days Park (Wadsworth & Allen Streets, Allentown). FREE.

Contact Squeaky Wheel (884-7172/squeaky.org) for more info.