The Golden Egret Studio

Keeping Afloat

2011-12-12T11:46:00.000-05:00

The return to one's own dreams is rarely captured for anyone other than the one who holds the dream in their own heart. In this case, an image is available to share the joy of my return to the things that I hold sacred. It wasn't an easy return, with many days spent healing and recuperating. But perhaps it was a return that was earned through believing that it would happen one day...when I was ready.

Remember to Look Up

2011-10-17T20:14:00.001-04:00

On today's worksite, we could have easily missed the beauty that was right beside us.

Wind is Beauty

2011-10-16T21:17:00.001-04:00

Today, after a long weekend on windy roofs, a coffee cart vendor reminded me of the beauty of the wind. After battling gale force gusts on two rooftop sites where anything and everything became airborne, it was nice to have someone speak kindly of the invisible forces. He said it simply, but poetically, "I like the wind. It is beauty."

It reminded me that I spent half a year letting the wind be the directional guidence for my camera as it made the images of light flashing through water in Newfoundland. The wind was given shape as the camera was propelled across the water's surface. Simplicity was beauty, and beauty was all around.

2011-09-10T20:48:00.001-04:00

Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide

An Island Upon a Roof

2011-09-10T20:14:00.001-04:00

Sometimes we don't have to travel far to travel well

Who Needs the Corner Office?

2011-07-16T10:26:00.001-04:00

We've got the roof! Just another day at work.

News from the Roof

2011-07-12T20:37:00.001-04:00

I was cooked on the roof today. Me, my crew and team of Corporate Volunteers smiled, sweat and nearly passed out from their healthy dose of Corporate responsibility in temperatures well over 100 degrees. I am so proud of them, several beautiful moments of kindness, generosity and real team building from a group of bankers. I convinced one Sr Executive to run through the park sprinkler with me, another secretly paid the fozen ice cart to hang around and give us our fill, while others simply sucked it up and got the rather torturous labor done and finished with style. We discussed Hedge funds, soft coral, sea turtles, Maui, sailboats, swimming pools, but most surprizingly was our discussion of how different people define wealth. I told them that travel is my wealth. Knowing first hand about the people and places of this world is my nest egg. Not a single one disagreed.

Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide

Environmental Boot Camp and Beyond

2011-05-03T17:42:00.008-04:00

Me and the "mud pail" are now inseparable

What a difference a few weeks can make. In February of this year, I was investigating solar panels and other low impact environmental solutions. Now just a few months later, I am helping to retrofit NYC buildings. How did that happen? A lot of early mornings and a great environmental construction training program gave me the jump start that I needed. I dove in head first and dedicated myself to my 'learn by doing it' philosophy.

It is a seemingly long jump from evening research in the NY Public Library to 5am alarm clock settings, stamina training and OSHA certification. But murals are in my opinion the most creative end of construction, so I felt confidant that my past field experience would help me to move ahead. I also wanted to find a way to include my environmental leanings as well as my educator background. I was ready for a bold move that only a boot camp-esque experience could deliver.

But before I get into that, we must look at why women would need their own training programs.
Women in construction are often looked at with disdain. We are seen as job stealer's that should be employed behind a desk, not on a scaffold. I have been hissed at and sneered at by other independent contractors, especially painting contractors who cannot and do not do murals. It seems like a strange fight to pick, but even today, other crews attempt to bully women off the work site. Women make excellent construction workers, but they are about 10% of the workers here in the city. Sad, but true.

So before I launched into the intimidating world of murals in NYC, I decided to transform myself from an office employee back into a career that is part blue, white and green collar. I wanted to leave my mark on NYC by literally making it a little bit better. I wanted to help to reset the city's consciousness. I also wanted clear results that could be measured. In other words, I wanted it all.

Enter boot camp...I got into the program by exhibiting competency in math and English, and two interviews. The process was quick and before you knew it, I was searching for women's steel toes and Carhartt pants. I was prepping by watching the E2 PBS series, desperate to get my environmental game on.

Within the classroom, I was on the surface perhaps out matched by a couple of tables of women who were fresh out of the police and/or military. They were powerhouses of strength and it appeared that nothing was going to intimidate them. Enter pale, lanky me whose childhood name was "rickets." I was kinda bony and looked like I wouldn't make it through the first week. I even had a slight limp from my leg surgery the week prior. I looked like wounded prey. What I had going for me was a hunger for change and a mind that liked a good challenge. Plus, I never give up without one heck of a fight. Those things were well hidden within my protruding rib cage.

So in I walked and sat down like I was a little tornado of construction know how, crossing my leg and twirling my steel toes around like I was born to wear them. Did it intimidate my class? not really, but it was worth a shot.

Little did any of us know that I could learn to lift 1/2 my body weight and still manage a smile. I embraced my inner number cruncher that had been dormant and perhaps shadowed a bit by my math genius Brother. I was a desperate to do well, but not at the expense of my peers. I became a team player, a tutor, and tried to limit my complaining and bruise comparisons to short but meaningful outbursts. We became well bruised from running the stairs with anything and everything, from 63lb mud pails, to ladders, plywood and any other heavy/obnoxious piece of construction equipment that we had laying around. I was sleep deprived, along with being dairy, wheat and coffee free, which is a bad combo. This seemed like an insane time to stay true to my dietary pledge, but I did. I whined at times, and was wimpy at other times, but never gave up.

I grew new muscles and learned a new language of sorts. Now able to speak of voltage drops and Rip saw cuts with comfort and interest. I can now identify an unsafe scaffold a block away, and can cut a mitre box with precision.

On the inside I changed a lot and on the outside I changed a little bit, including the addition of a sparkly white hard hat. The hard hat was awarded for getting up in all weather and arriving in any of three boroughs before the sun rose everyday for six weeks. It symbolized not giving in to the temptations of comfy beds and snooze tag. Making your body move even when every muscle ached. The hat though made of plastic was worth it's weight in gold at our graduation ceremony, for it was a prize that was granted for nothing short of stubborn determination. Since stubborn determination seems to be my thing, it is no surprise that the hard hat now thumps against my thigh as I catch my predawn subway ride. It garners a lot of concerned looks from male construction workers and a lot of small nods from women on the train. It symbolizes so much more than my own personal battle to make a change in my own life, it speaks of a much larger battle to make a change in others lives as well, namely a change towards equality.

I am proud to be able to be able to move ahead into unknown situations and explore emerging employment fields. I think we as women are success stories every time we step on a subway dressed in a way that nobody expects. I like that my steel toes ruffle a few feathers and my paint stained clothes make children smile. I am happy when 20 something workforce trainees say that they want a hard hat just like mine. It is a small symbol of moving forward with strength and courage, like every single member of my class did.

So I think of all of those women in my class, on my work site, and those in my family who were influential in shaping my idea that we can do any job that we care to. Sometimes I smile when I think of my once lanky Mother climbing into a giant grain truck and plopping me down on the seat next to her. My legs swung a foot above the floor as we bounced and laughed our way along country highways never thinking that we were doing anything out of the ordinary. We were mavericks to the core and remain that way to this day. On a final note, thank you as well to all the other renegades who cheered for me these past few weeks. I tip my hard hat to all of you.

Spring Nesting Project Discovered

2011-02-01T12:38:00.015-05:00

Mexican House Finch nest (photographed in Winter) a collaboration between the finches and myself. Nest created using synthetic and natural fibers.

New York, NY

This past Spring, I began to interact with the wildlife in my area while allowing that interaction to be as natural as possible. I had noticed a pair of Mexican House Finches that had wanted to nest in the palm tree in my apartment. They were chirping to each other as they eyed the tree through the glass window. It was clear that the two were out looking for a home. It was equally clear that my room was filled with sculptures that mimic the environments that wildlife are looking for. It dawned on me that we could work together and build a nest.

Now building a nest is no small task, so I left the building to the experts, the finches themselves. I became one of many neighborhood material providers. Some providers, like the workers at a nearby construction site were probably unaware that the finches were raiding their discarded rope and strapping materials. I was equally unaware of their other sources until I noticed their nest after a big snowfall this past January.

I began by collecting up all of the pieces of natural fibers that I had discarded in my studio. Bits of linen and silk thread, wool yarn and the like. I made a hanging sock out of a length of women's nylons that I also use in my work. Week after week seemed to go by and all I could hear were their chirping nearby. I decided to add other fluffier materials that could charm a finch. I loaded additional materials to the existing fibers, this time adding Spanish moss, and some eco packing materials made from recycled wood. The sock was now overstuffed with a great variety of materials and it worked it's magic.

Several pairs of Mexican House Finches began appearing at my window to raid the goods. There was an Alpha pair (the reddest male who has managed to gorge himself on the most red berries and turn himself brighter red than the rest) and two other pairs. What I had not considered was that the finches saw my early sock offering and probably decided on their nesting site due to the materials. When I heard them chirping nearby, they were building the base of the nest from the construction materials. My supplies provided the inner nest materials.

I managed to capture a bit of video of the Alfa Finch as he raided the goods. This was no small task, because he is quite adept at making a very quick raid. (I am currently editing this video clip for presentation later. ) The Summer came and went, and what I did not realize, due to the thick leaf cover, was that the finches raised their offspring about fifteen feet from my window.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was looking out my window when I spotted a blotch of snow suspended in the tree. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that it was the nest containing the materials from my "nest helper" sock along with a great variety of other materials. I was, and continue to be quite happy with our collaboration.

The finch's ability to adapt to their changing world allowed them to make a fabulous storm proof nest. Will they reuse the nest? I doubt it, but I am not entirely sure. Most birds start from scratch every year. Which gives us a good reason to collaborate once again this next May.

Polar Bear Swim Time Once Again

2010-12-31T21:09:00.006-05:00

I will again participate in the 2011 Polar Bear Swim in Coney Island. This will be year three for me in this charity plunge. Stop out there after 11am and I promise that you will share a smile with a great group of people. We all will run into the ocean at 1pm sharp. Maybe consider another location if Brooklyn doesn't work for you. Even if you are far away, a pledge at anytime throughout the year will help the courageous little swimmers who are battling things bigger than a cold day at the beach. $73000 has already been raised so far this season for the wonderful Camp Sunshine where the children with life-threatening illnesses get to bring their entire family along for a memorable experience all while surrounded by some of the most compassionate people on earth. It is all there for them including state of the art medical facilities and the camp is completely free! Families from all over the country are brought to this camp, so maybe even someone in your neighborhood can benefit from this great organization. Spread the word, help collect some money and more families will be accepted into this unique program.

Every year as I gather my own bearings before the plunge, I take a moment to close my eyes and imagine the little ones letting their "wish boats" afloat on the lake. Then it is time to jump in, scream, and spend New Year's Day talking and laughing with strangers as we share our own unforgettable experience.

Wherever you are tomorrow, may all your wishes come true...

The Business of Art

2010-12-14T16:32:00.006-05:00

I have put myself in the trenches these past two weeks by absorbing a wealth of business training courses that have been available within New York City. It is my intention to try to relay some of that information back to you through the filter of artist needs. I wanted to momentarily look past the arts organizations like NYFA , CUE , or LMCC ,VLA or Creative Capital that supply us with a bounty of information for our careers as artists. For now, I wish to focus on the wealth of general business education that is available to all of us in New York City, and thanks to books and websites, the information has the ability to travel anywhere.

My first recommendation is for the NYPL's Science and Business Library. John Crant is presenting a workshop on resume preparation tonight. I have been able to catch two of his lectures in the past two weeks, and both were filled with valuable information that can be translated into our needs as working artists. Artists use their resumes for many purposes. They are posted on our websites, used in grant proposals, sent to galleries as well as presenting us to a variety of employers. The artist resume is a sprawling beast of 3-4 pages. Crant is able to give some extremely helpful information on how to position yourself through your resume while staying on just one page. I will be purchasing his book as a little present to myself this holiday season. Keep an eye out for other workshops that he will be offering in the upcoming weeks.

On a closing note, I just want to encourage other artists to attend as many career development courses as you can. I have never gone to one that I did not find worthwhile. Although much of the information is directed toward corporate job search. Keep in mind that our grant panels and certainly our potential corporate sponsors will appreciate our ability to effectively communicate with them through the formulas that they understand.

Artist Statements

2010-11-26T12:16:00.007-05:00

Every year as winter sets in upon us, I revisit my artist statement. Since a good artist statement is a fluid work, it seems only right to check in and see if it still represents me. Perhaps the biggest obstacle that I encounter is not the writing itself, but the editing it down to meet the word count limit for artist grants. The goal is to say what you need to say in 100 words or less. It sounds fine, until you try to do it. The sparse opening lines above are already 88 words. That may be part of the reason why artists have statements that link together the biggest, most complicated conceptual terms that they can find. These unintelligible statements that we have all produced may be the result of trying to make writing fit in the little white box on the screen.

There has been a growing push to have artists be savvy creative writers, grant writers, and project plan writers. Throw in the writing of budgets and proposals and you will see that an artist needs not only to be a writer, but both a creative and an academic one, on top of what they are actually supposed to be doing which is art. The learning curve is huge. They always say that once you have it written, it is only a matter of tweaks. But for me, someone who enjoys writing, it seems like I spend most of my time butchering my prose into a haiku like 100 words. It is a test of word efficiency. I think that is why so many statements sound exactly alike. It is a matter of proven word power. Some terms have grown to be more useful in saying a lot in terms of describing the creative process. This is also known as talking the talk. The problem is that the "talk" all sounds quite similar, and it has little to do with the work that the artist has created.

So how to we show our true selves to a panel of our peers? How do we appear outstanding in print so that they actually view our work? I decided to turn to the pros and see what they had to say on the matter. I invested in Ariane Goodwin's book, Writing the Artist Statement-Revealing the True Spirit of Your Work.I will spend the duration of my Holiday weekend reading it and I will report back with my findings. To be continued...

Black and White

2010-11-19T00:35:00.003-05:00

A storm passed through New York City the other night. It left the city noticeably stark and weathered in appearance. For whatever reason this turning of season leaves me wanting to be outdoors and then reflect upon those observations in the micro studio that I inhabit. Late last winter, my sculptures took on a bold b&w color banding that I find myself again drawn to as winter makes it's approach.

Although I was disappointed as I watched the gorgeous leaves being sucked off the trees and promptly loaded into bags within Central Park, one gift remained in place of the leaves, it was a small group of migrating ducks. Now you may be thinking that autumn splendor can not be matched by ducks, but these are the designer ducks that I have only seen in my Peterson First Guide on Birds. As a child on a farm in Wisconsin, I spent many a long winter afternoon questioning if these ducks even existed or if it was some field guide ploy to make you spend your life seeking made up creatures. They did not look any thing like the big white roast-able (sorry ducks) ones that roamed our land and took dips in my plastic swimming pool with me. No, these had ruby red beady eyes and head fans that raised like sails. They looked slightly demonic and completely fake, that is until yesterday.

Yesterday changed everything. There they were flaunting their beauty to an uninterested female duck, and a very interested female human. Swimming in loopy loops and stretching their necks out to make a call that I can only compare to some of the uttering of cranes. A small bold duck that made an otherwise distracted jogger stop and ask me, "God, what is that?" The Hooded Merganser: Lophodytes cucullatus was there with three friends (one potential mate and two males that needed to get lost.) It was almost a mockery of adventure travel, here I was in central Manhattan viewing 5 species of birds that are rare or nonexistent in the many homes and home bases that I have had. One good storm was all it took to have them take shelter for the night. Here they were flopping about in the rays of the early morning sun in a very artificial pond in an artificially planted park. They were in paradise. Central Park would become their winter holiday home. When the couple "connects" they may push on to the lake or Turtle pond and nest there, but that is about all the searching they will probably do.

Every nature guide to New York notes that these "exotic" Canadian birds winter in the parks of New York. But most people when questioned say that they have never seen them. If I go to Jamaica Bay, I see Brants and Buffleheads, Osprey and a Black-Crowned Night Heron. One day I even got to see a White Pelican far far from home. But never the Hooded Merganser. Although the wind carried my leaves away, it left behind a childhood dream come true. It seems like a pretty fair trade.

Write on a Full Stomach

2010-09-12T19:01:00.009-04:00

This was my summer of loss. It seems that I could not escape it. Loss was everywhere. I found some peace by immersing myself in dance. It was time to figure out what the difference between the meringue and salsa is, how to make a Western two-step look believable, and finally how to make the Bhangra your friend. I learned some tough lessons, like the fact that I am not nearly jaunty enough for swing, nor am I as enthralled with tango as I once thought (after one too many close embrace tangos.)I was relieved to realize that I have been dancing something closely resembling the meringue quite naturally since the age of five. To me it was a nameless hip sway that would just seem to seep out of my child frame and later it would prove to be a wondrous gift that would let me slip into tribal dance lines around the world without much of an effort.

In this summer of loss, I also had to face the fact that far too many other facets of my personality had been lost in an entirely different kind of shuffle. I had lost quite a bit of myself in the ever present pressures to be too much of a teammate, or more specifically, a support system for others. So what to do? I holed myself up and put myself in a self imposed quarantine of sorts. A lock down that would help me to remember the self that ended up on the bench somewhere along the way. Many got mad at me for looking after myself, as they had grown very accustomed to not being supportive when I very much needed someone not to crinkle their nose when I discovered something I loved or may have been good at. I didn't hear anyone say "good for you," well, except for me. I said "good for me" sometimes when I let myself focus on what my lost dreams are. I had surrounded myself with cutthroat competitors that had given up on their dreams, so they were not too happy to learn of my return to mine. What can I say, it happens to us all at times.

I could blame NYC, my food allergies or the struggle to live your artistic dreams that may be overwhelming at times. It could be the fact that I weaned myself off coffee, soy, wheat and dairy in a knockdown drag out battle to figure out what I should be eating. I could blame my shyness, the %$^%ing Starbucks monkey that was very hard to shake, maybe the excessive number of over 100 degree days in this NYC summer, or possibly blame myself for not being a better judge of character, or simply the fact that I see so much potential in others that I overlook the shortcomings that they possess. But then again, I could just blame no one and nothing and move along with things, and so I have.

The hard thing is really focusing on your dreams when you haven't really been able to fully explore that option in sometime, if ever. Coming to New York put me in a survivalist mode, but it appears that I have become too adept at handling crisis and as a result I have selected jobs and relationships that all involved crisis management of some kind. I have developed the bad habit of helping others too much, and if I step back and really take a good look, I don't find many others offering the same reliable nurturing advice. So what is the result? The well runs dry, and instead of waiting for rain, you must build a new well.

Today's wet,cool weather brings out my creative spirit and the urge to cook has returned (as expected) along with the urge to write. Food and creativity are one for me. As I write tonight, I munch down a steamy bowl of vegan coconut curry using every color vegetable in the farmer's market. From yellow wax beans, to purple eggplant, red peppers and green and orange heirloom tomatoes. It was so rich and tempting that I let the eggplant overcook and become a rich stew and forgot all about cooking the rice, just eating the buttery curry like porridge.

So, it is with a very full belly that I write tonight, just before hoping off to the market-yes shopping after 8 on a Sunday in NYC- to complete my gluten free peach mystery desert. I feel rested, nourished and calmed by the weekend of creativity and reflection. I have made the time to upload two submissions for a video festival, revisited some chapters in Jackie Battenfield's, The Artist's Guide, edited some videos that I can now see in a new light, added a few of my murals to my website (while reminding myself that I am a muralist) and redesigned/ordered some new business cards (reflecting the fact that I remembered that I am a muralist.) Overall, a very grounding weekend of creativity that will prepare me for yet another week on a Federal Grand Jury and so much more...

Editing Process

2010-07-08T00:46:00.004-04:00

When I typed the word rendering into the digital Thesaurus, it didn’t succeed in alleviating my current pessimistic view of the word. I put myself on this little English language research task as I wait for my overloaded computer to sift through video files and produce a presentable outcome through video rendering. The Thesaurus offers several word alternatives such as: depiction, representation, interpretation, picture, description and expose. But none of those words seems to capture the frustration that this time consuming video process holds for me. After two days of looking at krill footage, several long rendering sessions and frustrating self-reviews all while in 100 degree heat. This working method resulted - not surprisingly- in redo after redo. I have developed an eye twitch from the word.

The krill are captured in dizzying takes that may produce seizures -as one of my artist friends so kindly noted- and so busy are the clips that the editing process is rather brutal. I feel that I cannot possibly be alone in my frustration with editing non-linear video. Most artists pass the editing ball to a pro, while I am cursed with a mid-western “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” mentality. Asking for help doesn’t seem like a viable option, but tonight I wish it were.

When I kick back and view the takes I feel a peaceful calm sweep over me. The swish of the tide and the blur of life are captured in colors so psychedelic that it looks like they have been altered. The beauty of it all is that they have been altered quite naturally. The whole scene is viewed in soft focus because it is being viewed through a heavy concentration of life. The water is in syrup like consistency due to the mass intensity of plankton. Their bodies create a filter effect through which the scene is viewed. The plankton become the rose tinted glasses through which the ocean is observed. Not only is life possible because of plankton, but life is also more beautiful because of them as well.

This scrutiny reminds me of why I do what I do. Although I often blur the world around us through odd perspectives and subjects, I am clearly rooted in the real, tangible natural world that surrounds us. In my striving to use as little equipment as possible, I let nature do some of the work for me. I get so up close and personal that much of the footage is in soft focus, creating the blurred haze reminiscent of opening up your eyes underwater. Throw in a few billion plankton and I have all of the special effects that I need. Part of my actions may be out of contempt for our HD world and all that goes with it. I am a hold out to the low definition world, where mistakes happen and beauty is found there.

I don’t know any other video artist who has intentionally taken a hammer to their camera so to destroy some of the unnecessary functions. But I know they are out there somewhere. This year as I drifted through the Whitney Biennale I felt like I was trapped in a tech trade show. There were so many video displays that utilized HD technology, high end editing software and every tech trick they could dream up, but to me and others, something was lost in the translation. What seemed to be lacking was intimacy. It is hard to bring intimacy to any medium that relies on electricity. I found that in my own early neon sculptures, and I still have an emotional distance with any web based art project. I know intimacy is not an important factor to many contemporary artists-as it is a risky association that implies feelings. But regardless, I still want to wallow in life and feel humbled by the grandeur that exists just beyond our reach.

So with that said, I will return to my 3.5 min single channel celebration of oozing life. I will breathe in deeply and enjoy the placement of cross fades and text boxes. I will remind myself that I learn something new every editing session that I endure. I will also remind myself that 79% rendered is closer than I was an hour ago. But most of all I must remember that until that baby gets rendered, there isn’t any way to share it with viewers like you.

New video posted on website

2010-07-05T17:04:00.004-04:00

I have just posted the long overdue video clip from 'Ascension' on my website Filmed in Newfoundland in 2007, the video came to represent perseverance -more specifically strength against adversity.

I also offered up an additional statement about my process which reads as follows:

"My video method transports me to areas that are considered ‘in-between spaces.’ Drawn to the point of convergence where air and water meet, where oceans combine, and deep-seas mix with shallow. These several inches of water are where chaos is heightened. I explore what is just beyond our terestrial boundaries by focusing my efforts in what occurs in under one meter of water.

Rather than trying to control the chaos, I have developed a filming method that records this disorder to its fullest. I have modified a silent scientific camera to give proof to my experience. Short takes paraphrase hundreds of hours spent observing change. The locations themselves are also ‘in-between spaces’ as I survey the Central Park Lagoon and NYC street puddles with the same curiosity that I offer the Grand Banks or coastal Hawaii."

New sculptures

2010-04-26T21:32:00.005-04:00

Serpentine forms circle about the studio as I revisit this familiar form. One that is so well suited to my tall narrow working space. Stretching from floor to ceiling or from wall to wall, I stuff delicate, soft, shapeless nylon with cedar wood, plastic and aluminum capsules. These pill like forms are suspended within a net of translucent mesh stocking, stacked within the tube like pancakes atop one another.

They are immediately familiar to me, taking me back of a childhood spent watching earthworms move in the rain. They also take me to the drifting tide- in that middle space between surface and depth of the sea. Like the long armed Zoo plankton that loomed in the red tide feed. They are also unlike anything I know, for it must be that way.

Repeating the form, but changing the materials, from dense to translucent and back again. These are designed to float both in air and in water-defying the space around them. I sleep beneath the tentacles and watch the last light glow upon their skin like surfaces. I continue to build them as I am consistently finding the uniform materials-these ready mades- that I need. The process is methodical, like dressing a child, then hanging these forms up like clothes upon the line. When my supply of materials grows scarce, my interest will too shift to another form to string like beads.

The Nose at the Metropolitan Opera

2010-03-14T14:05:00.007-04:00

Do whatever you have to...get tickets for this. William Kentridge's wit and intellect are showcased in this piece.

What do we do with what we have learned?

2010-02-28T17:53:00.008-05:00

Upon a recent viewing of The Peabody Museum’s Oceanic collection, it struck me that I need to do something more with the knowledge that I have gained. As I peered into case after case, I realized that I could make many of those artifacts myself. Mine would be less refined than a master's work, but I know the essence of the making, learned and lived in the boats, beaches and jungles of many places. After spending fifteen years in and out of isolated island villages, I have acquired a layman's knowledge in the making of artifacts. From mat weaving, tapa pounding, harpoon carving, costume creation, seed work, feather work, pottery, fish hook carving…the list goes on and on. But here I sit upon the fair isle of Manhattan wearing the most unlikely face for the keeper of traditional knowledge.

Something about my nature allowed me into the lineage. I appear completely harmless, I am fearless, athletic, and in their eyes, completely lost. So I become adopted quite readily, and then promptly put to work. My pied piper personality type keeps me in good company in all times, and my young consorts allow me to add amateur linguist to my skill set. I can say niceties to appease all of the tribal elders just in case they stopped by to check on my fern frond costume.

Not only am I a ready gatherer, but I have also been known to display remarkable hunting tendencies. In the past I have displayed underwater harpooning skills, the ability to make a woven grass harness for carrying land crabs back to the village (so they are unable to break your fingers) I can bring a rock fish up a 350ft cliff face without teenage seagulls getting it, I can hold a stone to my chest and plunge to the bottom of the sea to collect clams- without busting my lungs-and so many more useful skills. But what do I do with this knowledge here?

As artists our lives and our work are so intertwined. But right now I feel like there is a great rift between my daily life here in New York and the knowledge filled, more traditional life that I naturally return to when I get away from this place. Artists are not always known for their adventuring ways. Society views artists as urban dwellers, subway riders, cafe sitters. I even know one New York artist who proudly backs this social view by claiming that he will not travel to any place where you cannot buy a proper cappuccino. During my transit to the museum, my seat mate turned to me and said, “so you made it all the way to Boston all by yourself?” Knowing that he had already learned that I was travelling from New York, I decided to let that one go. I made really big eyes and blinked them twice before responding, “I sure did” as I quietly began carving a harpoon.

Now and Then

2010-02-09T21:02:00.013-05:00

Tonight, Gabriel Orozco spoke about his piece Mobile Matrix that is part of his mid-career retrospective that ends March 1st at MoMA. In this panel discussion, Orozco again pointed out that he shuns the imposed classifications of he and his work. These classifications frequently allude to he being a nomad, and his work being romantic or poetic in nature. He also brushed off those die hards who loved his dabbling with chaos and order in the nineties (with myself being included in that herd.) As I travelled home, I couldn't help but think about the role of the conceptual artist today.

Considering that my own work was deemed "too conceptual" by the Education Department of a major NYC museum just two weeks ago, the topic has remained in the front of my mind. In my case the museum felt that my work may be too cerebral for the common man. Orozco seems to be having the opposite effect. The art public adores his work, and shows their adoration by coming up with analogies or generalizations that are at times humble, but still simply human efforts to reach an understanding about his work and are then left to struggle with language to describe it. The artist (Orozco) rejects these simple classifications as he continues to change his work in what may be an effort to remain just out of reach, or else simply remain in the present.

It is hard to overlook the fact that Orozco once cupped clay in his hands, then opened that heart-shaped object to the camera, displaying it in front of his own bare chest. In another example he rolls plasticine around a city. This ball of material mimics his own bodily form by being the same weight as he. This performative act allowed the object to absorb the textures, substances and the experiences of a place. Both are blatantly sensual acts, but is it wrong to call them so? I am frequently accused of being a sensualist, but I cannot possibly reject the obvious. It is part of why I work in water and also in sculpture, the sensual is part of my nature.

So what do we do as conceptual artists, and at what point does the conceptual artist become a romantic notion in it's own right? Conceptual art isn't new by any means, and as we all know time has a way of romanticising everything. Orozco spoke as if the 90's were ages ago, while most of the people in my seat row and one panelist were still in art school in the 90's. The young Orozco still has a decade on many of the artists who were nurtured by his work while we were in school, or shortly thereafter. For me, the 90's are too fresh to be romanticised, while he seems to want his ideas from the 90's to go away. He lives in the "now," while many are still captivated by what was "then."

The Winter Studio

2010-01-28T17:01:00.008-05:00

The Science lab that never ends...a view inside my studio

An entire month has gone by once again. It was a productive month full of proposal writing, prototype creation and display. It was a time to gather all things: materials, research, books, and every ounce of wit that I could muster. It seems that all signs are directing me to just keep going forward in whatever increment possible. I find it very easy to sleep these days, drifting off to the sights of new 'creatures' floating above my head. I think I have created the world's scariest mobiles, but to me they are dreamy even if they are

comprised of taxidermy beasts.

The novelty of the sea never fades, nor does my love of objects. I have been experimenting with new textures while trying to be more aware of my simple palette choices. The stark nature of off white bone and shell seems right with the cast away spools of ivory wool. Just as they all complement the clean lines and minimal works that winter inspires in me.

After a big push of work and reflection, it is now time to refill myself with an infusion of culture. Jazz, classical, ballet and even sport are going to fill my mind and heart again after these very long days. I think it is a just reward for having worked myself through the holidays. Maybe my holiday is due.

Entropy and My Personal String Theory

2010-01-10T01:09:00.004-05:00

It is now for the third time that I tackle the essay titled Entropy and Art, by Rudolf Arnheim. I was making headway during the first two passes on this small but potent book before I got the idea to give my copy to an artist whose work I adore. I could have left it at that and walked away from trying to figure out the discrepancies in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I could have read a nice little fluffy novel over the holidays. I could have worked on my languages, grant writing, art production, or plankton research. I could have done a lot of things, but what I ended up doing was seeking yet another volume and I now curse Amazon for this.

Half way through pass number 3 on the essay, I come into a box of string. I should say a giant tub of hundreds of yards of yarns and string. It gave me a great chance to vent on something methodical. I decided that I would begin with constructing a series of totems, then proceeded to en robe that recent newspaper article (where I was misquoted) in several hundred yards of string. I felt quite liberated in the creation of this soccer ball sized time capsule.

Hudson

2010-01-06T20:44:00.008-05:00

Stills from The River Holds the Memory of Light by Anna P.

With it being January once again, it is time for me to continue with my Hudson river video project. In January of 2008, I began documenting the Hudson river in dozens of short takes that captured the first few seconds when the camera was pulled under. These takes were then linked into a circuit, so that the viewer saw land fade away over and over again. I began this series with thoughts of the Hudson River Valley School of Painting and our mutual fascination with light. I decided to update the representation of the river by capturing the light from within the river rather than upon it's surface.

My New York Media Summary

2010-01-04T16:51:00.005-05:00

Some of you may wonder why I am so concerned about my on-again-off-again relationship with the New York City media. I have compiled this brief summary of my appearances since 2007.

Anna's Wonky Costume Appearances

One week off the plane in 2007, I appear on the Today Show and conduct an interview dressed as a 10ft tall fluffy giraffe. My Mother manages to miss that particular episode. I cannot sense any magical chemistry between Matt Lauer and I, so I leave NBC Plaza resentful of the costume for blowing my chances.
2008 me and my consorts nearly knock over the NY1 aerial cam while dressed as 11ft tall pink sea dragon and 12ft tall Puff the Magic Dragon; flanked by the before mentioned giraffe. Camera operator is partially to blame for misjudging our stature. Resulting footage makes it appear that we attacked the camera.
January 2, 2009 a point blank shot of wonky me at Polar Bear swim is all over the Internet. I make a pledge to knock it off with the toothy grin.
May 2009, my big chance with The New York Times critic and photographer, finds me slinking about a stage dressed as a sea anemone. Critic arrives late and tries to"figure it out" on her own...
NY1 plucks me from the Halloween parade masses, takes me by the fin and walks me into the limelight. I find myself unable to move due to stage fright. I appear like a deer in the headlights then shout "Land shark" through three rows of Styrofoam shark teeth. They go to commercial and give me a strange look.
January 1, 2010, Channel 12 and THE DAILY NEWS interview me while I am cranked on adrenaline after possibly 4 minutes too long in the water. I make giddy irrational comments that make me sound like a Polar Bear party girl all while dressed like the Flintstones Grand Pooba. More photos splayed on Internet. New photographer friend discretely notes that this year's point black shots of me are now going to the highest bidder in the Japanese press. I once again ode to knock it off with the toothy grin.

Meanwhile back in the islands...calm, rational articles about my artwork appear in regional newspapers and a magazine.

Better Media Relations in the New Year

2010-01-03T12:43:00.008-05:00

It no longer comes as much of a shock to see images of myself splayed about on the Internet just one day into the new year. It is what happens when you elect to begin your year with the Coney Island Polar Bears. This year was my second year, and with the expected air and water temp much higher than last year I thought I was ready. But it should come as no surprise that you are never really ready for this event. It is an event that teeters on chaos. Slightly controlled chaos is the name of the game. No mater how many NYPD and NYFD they have sprinkled about in red survival suits or big boots, no matter how many rescue boats and binocular peering lifeguards are at your flank, it remains on the tipping point of a riot. That is part of the beauty of it all. But it is such a wonderful rumpus full of such memorable characters, that you cannot resist the temptation.

Most of us site Camp Sunshine as a major justification for doing it, as it is an important cornerstone that grounds an event that is otherwise like a hairdryer dropped into a bathtub. We are of course doing it for so many reasons, some personal while more obvious. I am a strong believer in raising charitable funds through public humiliation. I also still believe in these community tribes that rise up for one day and share something wonderful. The Coney Island Polar Bears are the core of that tribe.

So off my pal Hannah and I went to seize the day. We had our funny costumes and bags full of towels. We had a strategy that had been carefully worked out over several dinner meetings over the past weeks. We thought that we had considered everything, but somehow I missed an important factor. We had somehow overlooked that with an increase in air temperature, there is also an equal increase in the media presence. Last year's windchill left me with log legs before I even got to the water. This desperate temperature left much of the media task force at home snuggled in their beds. But not this year. The media had their rubber boots on and they were ready.

We arrived to a media frenzy where photographers were five deep the entire length of the swim. There would be no possibility of avoiding it. We would be documented from more sides than we wanted, and since I am still camera shy any angle is too much for me. But first we had to break through them to get to the water. The event had set up a sort of roped off corral where the Sr. Polar Bears would parade down, but we were unsure if us tag along Polar Bear wannabes were allowed behind the rope. So instead we decided to bust through the crowd like two rodeo bulls. It wasn't pretty to try to have an ounce of grace while doing this, but the end result was we ended up making friends with one of the NY photographers who shoots for the Japanese press.

But all of our friendliness could not keep us from the wrath of the tabloid. One would think that in a charitable event that has been going on for decades, the they would give up on trying to make it sound like such a scandal. I have learned that for the rest of 2010 I pledge to "zip it" while in the presence of reporters. I promise be wary of any swank skinny jean wearing notepad carrying charmers. I will work on my media relations in the new year so to be a representation of good, kind acts. I refuse to get chatty in the presence in the media. And finally I pledge to remain out of the tabloids for the rest of 2010.

In the end we are a bunch of great characters who come together for a great cause on a great day on the best place in New York City, Coney Island...and best of all, together we raised $25,000 for Camp Sunshine. Mission accomplished. Thanks Coney Island Polar Bears!

Melt

2009-12-13T17:55:00.007-05:00

Opening title screen, Melt, 2009 by Anna Peach

There is nothing like art season to get us all creating again. I often find myself taking the subway home from a fantastic show filled with inspiration. In the last weeks I have moved between many points of inspiration. A trip to the Met, two concerts, a video festival, a Spanish film festival, Roni Horn's exhibit at the Whitney (twice) just to name a few. But few things inspire as much as finding just the right coffee table book cast away into the corners of the neighborhood book sale. One of the great perks of my neighborhood is the high concentration of intellectuals per city block. The used books come from the shelves of the best and the brightest that this city has to offer. So it is no surprise when the neighborhood sale throws you a bone in the form of a perfectly inspirational art book.

The book The Snow Show moved it's way onto my self just days after I had completed spending several long nights trying to make sense of the emotional state of a lot of things including the trapped under the ice footage that I made in Newfoundland in 2007. The footage lies somewhere between pulling a warm blanket over your head while sleeping in on a rainy day, and complete claustrophobic vantage points that leave you gasping for breath. I rather like the physical effect that the vantage point carries, I think it is it's strong suit (while others may disagree.) It was wonderfully perfect to see this bound volume that captures the temporal ice and snow works by such artists as Cai Guo-Qiang, Do-Ho Suh, Kiki Smith and Yoko Ono, all curated under Lance Fung in the Lapland light. The book is a little gem of inspired moments for anyone who needs a reason to celebrate the onset of winter.

It is in these quiet little moments of synchronicity that I feel most at home as an artist. So as I edit myself through this winter while up to my elbows in Mayan cocoa spiced tea, I wish you the clarity to see all of the wonderful things around you. For those of you who have left your creativity behind, I hope this season allows you the courage to push onward through the fog and write, paint, sculpt or film once again.

The Sea Remembered Yesterday NY Screening

2009-11-14T20:17:00.009-05:00

The Sea Remembered Yesterday, parts 1&2 By Anna Peach

On Sunday, November 22, from 4-8pm, two sections from my video series will be screened at the Fluid Festival at the Queens Museum

The Sea Remembered Yesterday is a series shot off Waikiki Beach, Hawai'i. In 2008, I decided to film the spot that I remembered from my childhood where I was once caught in a riptide and carried along the coast. I began my investigation by questioning if the sea also had a memory of its own experience. Filmed at the same time each morning and layered with footage from the previous day, this creates a visual record of place in an ever changing sea.

That time again

2009-10-25T12:53:00.004-04:00

Yes, It is that time of year when I strut through the Village in NYC dressed as some creature rejected from the Kroft Super Show. From the relatively tame giraffe to last year's 11 ft tall hot pink sea dragon, this year the pressure was on to come up with something new. I had several of you place votes on what I should be this year. Though they were excellent ideas...the materials that I was able to scrap together have limited my choices. I have seven reclaimed Barnes and Noble boxes and a pale metallic blue bed cover. So the way I look at it, it is painfully obvious that I have three clear choices: a seal, a dolphin or a manatee. I mean clearly a bunch of book boxes and a bedspread come together to form a manatee. Are you with me? I am going to give myself plenty of room to decide, since my focus is torn between writing a grant, studying Spanish verbs, and deciding what a walking manatee might look like. What was it that those researchers at Yale said about multi-tasking and reduced brain function?

Revisiting the Artist Statement

2009-10-10T11:07:00.010-04:00

Introduction: Environmental Sculptures

by Anna Peach

The Introduction series began within my first year after moving to Hawaii. I moved due to my love of islands. There is something about islands which remains just beyond my reach. My entire adult life has been dedicated to the study of islands. I have done it on my own. I have taken in over seventy islands in fifteen countries, from the North Atlantic to the Indo Pacific Rim. I have moved through them with trust in myself and a need to express it. ‘Home’ has become a fluid concept. With time, I became aware of the categorization of life on islands. More specifically what was perceived as ‘belonging’ as opposed to ‘not belonging’ was often a shift of time and desire. The term Introduction was chosen to mark the start of my exploration in environmental sculpture while also referencing the ‘introduction’ of both plants and people to this island.

The awareness of flora defining place falls into many scientific categories, from Bio geographic diversity to Ethno botany. Island isolation makes for scientific hot spots. Hawaii is where the introduction of new species is ripe with controversy, making the news nightly. It was this that brought me to try to make sense of the spirit of a people and their land in terms of environmental sculpture. I place myself somewhere between Indigenous peoples and science: our link is passion for the land. I am on my own journey through time and place, but unlike science I do not deal in absolutes. I dwell in the hazy shadows of the displaced flora.

I have chosen to use ‘real’ clothing elements combined with naturally occurring plant materials. Garments were selected which contain and control the human form. Plants are used in various ways, some for dye and others for raw materials. I use ‘real’ objects which are ‘in Hawaii’ but not ‘of Hawaii.’ Noxious vines and invading grasses are often my selected medium. These unwanted floras were once coveted ornamentals and now poisoned so to control. Now overgrown in precarious places: swampy wasteland and highway ditches. Collection is the basis of the process. It is in those long hours I watch the light move, the subtleties of season, and I know the land like the back of my hand. Yet I am constantly reminded that these seeds do not belong here nor do I.

The plant choice also explores the human impact on a place. Each plant was brought here for a purpose, but now they have inherited the titles Alien, Invasive and Introduced species. Our romantic notions of landscape are rekindled nonetheless. I create beautiful pieces which lure you in but they also remind us that in a land where everything grows, control is tenuous. These plants remain uncontrollable, a reminder of our human limitations.

After selecting a species I reduce them to the core of their power: reproduction through seed. I leave the seed intact so that the element of time continues. These are not static sculptures easing themselves to decay, but rather they are waiting for renewal, to begin again.
This seed in waiting further pushes the element of control. The very construct of these sculptures requires government intervention prior to leaving the State. Control is interwoven at every level of these works. Some of these pieces will never be able to leave the Islands as their natural chemical make up is of HCN also known as cyanide. They are in essence trapped: they do not belong here yet they cannot leave.

The utilitarian element remains within the work. They are a functional wardrobe complete with clothing hangers. Yet their nature lends them to become garments for the spirits of the land rather than human counterparts. They float suspended in time and space. In my compulsion to reorder nature, the human struggle to come to terms with the temporal and eternal becomes apparent: to control what cannot be controlled. The end results are sculptures which give shape to that which our eyes cannot see.

Ethno botany is interwoven with contemporary fashion styles. Reclaimed corsets, girdles and shoes not only reference a ‘real’ person who may or may not be alive, but also a moment of transition in cultural change. These garments reference the impact of contact with Westerners, reminding us of the vague and often contradictory explanations of what the pre-contact people wore. They also reference my own observations in Melanesia where the modern ‘underwire’ stands in for the coconut bra of dubious lineage. In my sculptures the clothing items have also been permeated with the dye of other alien plants, so to remain foreign to the core.

The articles of clothing mix references to East and West. I struggle and perhaps come to terms with my role among the displaced. I attempt to discern the distinctions of place in a contemporary global culture. I risk romanticizing the alien species in the same manner of earlier introductions. I too must remain responsible for these works if I return them to the land, as the advance of the species becomes imminent.

Sculptures created from highly invasive plant materials are released through fire. Burning not only complements the temporal nature, but it is the only amicable solution for balancing the ecosystem, romanticism and spirituality. Other less invasive sculptures, embalmed in varnish or protective cases they become like specimens of contemporary Hawaii.

Earth, fire, wind and water: the four elements which push and pull upon the sculptures of Introduction. They are the constant yet ever changing forces upon my new island home. Living on the most volcanically active island on earth makes it only fitting that I confront some of life’s more difficult challenges - the ability to let go and accept change. I trust that there will be beautiful plants to surround ourselves with - even if they are a long way from home.

Summer dives

2009-10-09T23:09:00.006-04:00

A detail from a study in adaptation. Recovered golf balls, urchin core, plaster on panel.

I know some of you may be thinking, "enough with the golf balls already." But I once again I spent a few days of my summer free diving for golf balls. How is that possible you may be wondering? It entertains me, what can I say. It is something that I cannot get out of my system. Something that I feel like I have yet to fully explore. So it remains there, hovering within me. I cannot say that it is simply the worn patina that the ocean currents have carved into their surface. I think that is part of their simple magic, but a fair amount of the allure impacted me one heat exhausted day in 2006.

One afternoon I discovered that the purple-black vanna (urchin) that inhabit the reefs of Hawaii can also survive in the rather toxic runoff zone near the hotel resorts. It is an otherwise barren wasteland of overheated water where little can survive, aside from the vanna (urchin) and garden eels (Moray.) The lava creates an undersea wonderland for eels who need a den. I discovered that there is a borrowing urchin that can be pinkish or purple (sorry cannot recall the species) that makes it's own borrow den in the lava rock at the bottom of the ocean. Where it got interesting was when I observed the urchin using a golf ball as a den door. It actually had poked its spines into the ball and then kept it as a shield on its back. When it went into it's borrow...it simply closed the door behind itself. Now for me, I found that to be an ideal adaptation to a compromised habitat.

So now, I keep rethinking and reinventing ways to incorporate this into my art. A new exploration uses a conch shell and the golf balls become barnacle like. I have to say it is striking with a nice balance of texture and shapes. Time will tell.

NYC ARTS Things to Do Open House New York Weekend

2009-10-08T12:11:00.001-04:00

NYC ARTS Things to Do Open House New York Weekend

Shared via AddThis

It is here again, everyone! My favorite weekend in New York City. Last year I did a mix of Architectural firms, Asian museums and dance, this year...I am eyeing the wastewater management plant and the secret collections at the Brooklyn Library.

Your Art Career Should be Worth $18

2009-09-30T21:36:00.008-04:00

Did you ever have one of those days where a kind, simple comment from a stranger nearly levels you? Well, today was my day. A speaker found a bit of encouragement in the "twinkle" in my eyes, as I sat in the audience tonight. I wasn't feeling very bright eyed on a day that began with my contemplating the difference in gliomas all while picking poodle poo out of the grass in Central Park. But anyone who knows me knows that I can pull beauty out of chaos like nobody else, so this became the newest set of challenges to build from.

Earlier in the day I had a long discussion about "righting" patterns of behavior. I am no stranger to this topic, as I often find myself willingly and "happily" clinging to my addictive ways. I don't have your obvious glaring societal addictions (aside from my on again off again battle with coffee), but I do suffer from the classic artist addiction. You may be thinking the worst right about now, but artists often suffer from a downright crippling ailment where we put everyone and everything before our art. It becomes a crazed whirlpool of making others successful all while we shove our own art into little spurts of effort.

When someone you know and love faces a health crisis we can respond in many ways. Supportive, informed, and overall solid actions need to occur, but I also think it is an important time for self-improvement. It is a time where we put others first of course, but if we loose all sense of self we are not very healing to be around. Self deprivation can be as toxic as the disease that we are trying to coax out of a loved one's system. I mean really, how are we going to help anyone see the beauty of life if we are not allowing our own selves to see it?

So off I went into the depths of New York City to remind myself that I am an artist. As I cruised my usual empowerment haunts I looked for a sense of possibility. So much possibility surrounds us in New York City that I think it almost suffocates us. Too many options can be more frightening than too few, but it was my mission to try to turn that way of thinking around tonight by wallowing neck deep in artists who want to be career artists. We could have been slinking around in Williamsburg bar, but instead we clustered into the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's current Artist Residency Space on 77 Water st. It was such a great turnout that the location had to be moved so that we could hear Jackie Battenfield discuss the likelyhood that we can all be career artists if we continue to push ahead.

Battenfield has just published a book called The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What you Love http://www.artistcareerguide.com/ . It is the kind of book that you will have in your life forever. My immediate response was to wrap my arms around it's 400 page girth as one might hug a pillow before bed. I held it this way during her lecture as well as on the train ride home. I found myself alternating between hugging it and reading it, which is a combination that I admired from the start. There are a lot of career guides for an artist to choose from, but this one feels different already. First of all, I liked her both as a person and as a speaker. Secondly, it is chucked full of intelligent quotes in the margins. Lastly, both her talk and her writing style is a bit like the career coach that you thought you would find in art school, but never did. Most of us did not have someone who stayed "on you" just enough to bring you to your best, but Battenfield's well layed out book can help compensate for that void.

Alright, it is time to close up for the night. Promise me that you will spend the $18 bucks as a gift to yourself.

Sponges

2009-09-07T12:55:00.008-04:00

I never knew that sea sponges grew in great quantity off from the far Eastern coast of Staten Island. I would have never guessed. I discovered them on one of my latest treks around the coast that surrounds New York City. I have to say that it is a tough one for me. I can find hope, beauty and inspiration almost anywhere, but the waters off New York city kinda make my heart sink. We all know that the area isn't exactly known for it's picturesque waters, but I continue on in search of something different, something special even there.

The sea sponges were a pleasant surprise. Two specimens now sit upon my windowsill mini-lab. I have rinsed them and seemingly re awoken their "sea scent." So now they sit in the open window to dry. The sent is a wonderful one. I was happy to find that the passing hurricane threw so many onto the beach for me to look at. The fresh sponges were bright rust orange. I wrestled an older sponge out of the wet sand and brought it home to look at. The rest I happily tossed back into the bobbing sea watching the copper float in the dark brown sea.

I found this link
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/edu/k12/snapshotday/activities/oysterorganismguide.pdf

that explains some of the creatures that can survive in even the highly polluted NY/NJ area.

my journal blog

2009-08-23T20:15:00.003-04:00

I finally remembered my user name/ password so to access my sub-blog... I will be posting my explorations and discoveries there. Sorry to my friends who noted they missed it. Just select it out of the "links to my art" column at left.

Seeing Through Water

2009-08-23T18:44:00.002-04:00

Underwater stills from my summer investigations of fresh water springs. Hazy mosquito filled afternoons...

Summer Crossroads

2009-08-23T18:13:00.007-04:00

It was one of those summers where I hoped for a bit of peace and reflection, but instead seemed to take on all things. Emotional, character building, soul searching sort of things. Looking to the past, looking ahead, all while drifting through the present. At the onset of summer, I hoped to get through a few good books. At summer's end I found that my knowledge had been tested in so many other ways. It is so much easier to talk about change. But real change is hard. It is much easier to remain stuck. To be stuck keeps you stationary, but at least you know what the day brings. There is a comfort in that. To push on means that you have to go into the unknown, and revisit tough lessons already learned.

In summer's final weeks I try to explore inspiration in the present. The inspiration that lays at my feet every day, but I busy myself so much that I do not see it. I look for inspiration in exotic locations, always somewhere else. I forget to try to investigate the wondrous worlds that co-exist in this metropolis. They crash together here, but the crashing is not so comfortable.

So in these weeks of transition, as summer slowly ebbs away, I try to remind myself that I remain the same even when locations change. I try to remember not to loose too much of myself in the transition. As nature takes a step back, my creativity steps forward. Reminding myself to move on through the time of uncertainty. Really examine the many courses that my life can take, and best of all take one. Pick one, any one and see where these roads, both internal and external, may lead.

The Influence of Dance

2009-06-07T16:29:00.004-04:00

Hovering in midair, the elements aligned. Stretched lines, pointed toes. The body fragmented and reconstructed into something that echoes vines and trees. A bean stalk of wax forms shaped into slender women's feet twisting to the ceiling, as willow branches intertwine. Jade green casts measured, numbered and named in a factory on the far side of the Pacific.

New York Times Review

2009-05-29T20:19:00.008-04:00

So they say you are not really an artist until you get squashed by the Times. I guess we now have that one covered. We had a great pair of performances, friends came, the NY Times sent a photographer, the house sold out...all seemed to be going absurdly well until the critic arrived. Well, maybe you can guess the rest. The Times critic came to our performance in grand fashion, stepping over the head of our dear Ryan as he performed his live sound score on his Mac. She was late in her arrival and the House didn't wait, so she circumnavigated the theater and did her own aerial maneuvers past the light booth and over the laps of many. What resulted was a scathing review of all performances, the editor of the program and even the theater itself. In the big scheme of things I didn't get it so bad.

Let me pull the quote,

"a sea-anemone-type creature covered in spiky white balloons hunched its way along the side. At the end there was a short film of something entirely indeterminate that seemed to involve water."

Ah yes, "entirely indeterminate" that is my favorite bit. For a visual artist working in nature, that is an outstanding complement. It is very hard to have something be "entirely indeterminate" and yet still get across that it is water. I was kinda happy. So it wasn't a loss for me. I got a great laugh from it and was honored that the powers that be sent us both a photographer and a critic. Plus it is almost guaranteed that the next New York Times review will be better...

Contact

2009-05-17T12:32:00.006-04:00

Symbiotic, rehearsal photo taken at the Park Avenue Armory, May 2009

Through many an ebb and flow, I ended up taking the stage here in New York. Thanks to the help of Moving Theater Company who sheltered us into their beautiful Park Avenue Armory rehearsal studio. Such a lovely space they created there high above Park Ave in the Cannon Room. We worked away in the late evening quiet of this grand structure, all while sculptor Ernesto Neto and crew took on the tennis courts below. Choreographers Yen-Fang Yu and Anthony Whitehurst decided to put me on the fast track toward learning contact improvisational movement. We spent seven months of discussions, plotting and rehearsals, and in the process I was given the opportunity to learn how to move. Now, appearing as an Anemone sounds like a rather simple dance move until you contemplate the fact that Anemones do not have spinal cords, and I do. So how to work around that? Bend, torque and bend some more, until you appear spineless and fluid. I swam every week along with their program. The end result this week was Yen-Fang smiling at me and calling me spineless. I was never so happy to hear that phrase.

Convergence

2009-05-02T19:52:00.002-04:00

Additional stills from the video Convergence.

Video by Anna Peach, Performance by Yen-Fang Yu and Anthony Whitehurst

2008-2009

Monkey Town Sceening with Movement Research

2009-04-27T19:46:00.008-04:00

This past Friday, my video "Convergence" was screened at Monkey Town in Williamsburg, Brooklyn thanks to the enthusiastic people at Movement Research. I was very impressed with the beautiful screening room that they created (think low white lounge couches that had the exquisite feel upscale bean bags) You could just sink into the experience, which is just what I needed. Comprised of four surround screens, which can play one video on all screens (as they did at the festival) or a different video on each. My mind lit up at the thought of the later. I have to say that I would propose my vivid underwater works if given another chance. The fractured, pixilated, shot through a piece of Chrystal video became a little too zen for it's own good. Pale and luminous rather than rich multi layered, projection changes everything. But what a way to get out of the starting gate with my new medium of video. Four giant wall sized screens and super projectors beaming my work about, it is hard to imagine a second act. But of course the second act is soon to follow (in three weeks to be exact.) Subtlety will again be key. The work "Anemone" will be part of the next festival. Shot as an installation on the floor of the Pacific ocean, the "Anemone" will come to life on stage through performance, dance, video and costume. I feel a long way from Honoka'a...

Convergence

2009-03-22T16:41:00.004-04:00

Stills from my video Convergence, 2009

I am newly drawn to the solidity of the body as it converges with the translucency of water. The spring dance project video takes on a shape of its own, and I try to follow it's lead. Some myth or legend shows its face, and became a narrative thread that is hard to overlook. Subliminal poems emerge. So I allow myself to pursuit the illusive. Falling asleep on piles of epic stories; turning pages as Circe turns Odysseus' men into pigs.

Archaeology

2009-03-17T20:25:00.006-04:00

I find myself returning to ideas, as I disassemble sculptures and reassemble and reinvent them here far away from the place where they were envisioned. After making three ocean crossings, I let the work morph into something slightly different. I recombine them with new elements, textures, metaphors. I snapped them apart in a garden in Switzerland, then squish them into tile grout upon a card table in Manhattan. One month of weekends were spent free diving in Hawaii so to collect these contemporary artifacts. They were alive then, being claimed back by the sea in a hundred year process. Young coral polyps, sponges and veils of plant life disguised them. I stole them from the seabed to study them, so change their context and reveal where lives collide.

The River Holds the Memory of Light-Hudson

2009-03-09T23:18:00.004-04:00

Three views I took from inside the Hudson River, January 2008

Tracking

2009-02-27T19:50:00.004-05:00

Somewhere along the way I stopped writing and started simply posting images of seaweed. Although I love those images, I think it is very telling about my life here in New York. I miss the days when my computer crashed so frequently that I was really unable to spend more than a few minutes here and there on the computer. The crashing was frustrating, but it also pushed me away from the computer and made me write in a journal, read a book, film or walk. Today, I have been on a self imposed lock down. Sifting through visual art images on my laptop and organizing them into a potential presentation. I am trying to build things when I feel like it rather than when I have to. This was an organizational day if there ever was one. I am struggling to find a workable solution to the growing disconnect between the underwater work that is amazing to produce and the number of hours on the computer that are spent editing. As I have said before, I miss windburn.

Having completed the most difficult time, the first year in New York, I am getting back into a studio practice. The balance between making work, writing, and researching is never easy when there are so many other things, daily struggle sort of things that pull at you. Somehow I have held on to the practice of creativity, even though my hands are questionably clean. Lately I have had several old friends note the inspiration that they have drawn from my blog. I am always surprised and relieved that others are drawn into the space where I dwell. I guess I am honest about the chaos. I do not pretend that everything is easy.

But with that being said, I am still finding my ways at times at odds with my true self. The constant checking in that is our current cultural norm still baffles me. Scattered bits of notes, fractured sentences, abandoned thoughts go into in and out of virtual boxes. Seemingly we are afraid to be alone for a day, a week or even an hour. The more we are connecting, the larger the disconnect grows, and I am joining the ranks. A couple of weeks ago I got a letter in the mail. Folded notebook paper, handwritten with a postmark from my past home. It carried sad news in an honest voice. I fell asleep with it on my chest and woke with it still in bed with me. It was a fragile reminder of what can so easily be lost.

Sound of the Waves

2009-02-24T20:15:00.003-05:00

New images that I am working with this week. The bottom of the waves, Waikiki, Hawaii.

Current

2009-02-21T09:53:00.004-05:00

My photograph of entangled seaweed, 11 feet below the surface, 2007 Newfoundland

The Graveyard, Grand Banks

2009-02-07T11:00:00.004-05:00

Stills from the newly edited video "Entanglements," filmed in 2007 by me in Newfoundland

Its hard to say whats going on here, so let me explain. It was at the end of my residency just as I was pushing to see this place is yet another light. After capturing so much unexpected beauty, glaring, soaring and at times boring beauty, I wanted to set into something darker. I had been told by the elder fisherman that the sea in this area held many pockets with unusual currents that swept anything be it net, body, or in my case camera to the bottom and held it there. A captive of sorts. This sounded like just what I needed so to push the limits of my filming. I wanted the sea to really be the force that was making the images. That was growing ever more important to have a clearer vision of how the movement of the sea changed the perspective that I was allowed to view. What the sea filmed is what I saw.

So I set out to look for one of these pockets in the sea, one of these"graveyards" where the sea held its prisoners. I was given a riddle-like list of clues of what to look for, along with head nods and twitchy gestures that indicated the far end of the cove. I set out after refusing the offered beer, and promising to take them up on one when the weather grew warm (gave me a good month I figured) It was the area that I had completely avoided, and later became the place of broken equipment. After several minutes of tricky climbing with a sagging load of snacks and cameras, I was very grateful to have not added the beer to the climb. One beer for me is the equivalent of twenty for another.

As I faced a twenty foot drop, a young mother gull sat on a distant nest and watched me. I needed to make sure that she did not abandon the nest because of me, but like the fisherman she seemed to welcome the interest in her home and even seemed to be entertained by my unravelling sixty feet of cable and casting it to the wind. My efforts were humbling at best. But I did manage to hit a spot where the undertow took the camera down to the "graveyard." Bleached old kelp and seaweed swayed softly to a rhythm separate from the surface of the sea.

So when I rediscovered this footage, I realized that its tempo was so different that I needed to work with that. Also the tangle of these uprooted plants became a labyrinth when filmed from within.

The Point of Departure

2009-01-23T19:55:00.002-05:00

Four stills from my video in progress, New York, 2009

Winter/Spring collaboration dance/performance/visual art

Rehearsal 2

The point of departure from what we know. Moving into a place where we would never go alone. We are combining ourselves to better understand the world around us. We are just entering the space, and I do not yet know how to let go of the physical body and become more like the dancers. I move knowing only to be sensuous or athletic, they speak emotional volumes in silence.

The Birth of Medusa

2009-01-20T19:43:00.003-05:00

Three stills from "The Birth of Medusa," By me in 2007, Newfoundland

After a mini screening last night, I realized that the more out of control my video footage is, the more they are appreciated. Take this one for example, where thousands of jellyfish are slammed through a channel, it was impossible to control anything with the tide being forced through a canyon like space. Timing was everything. I watched this area of the sea for three days before trying to film it. It still was not enough study. The first camera bounced and broke when a wave double backed just a second after the tossed camera left my hands. It was as if the wave just changed its mind. The second back up camera got sucked into an underwater crevice in the process of making this footage, a dangerous rock face climb between surges and frantic tug on the line freed it from the sea cavern, but within an hour it too was broken. One of those cameras became the reworked camera that I am now using to make a piece about dance, so all was not, and never is completely lost. What was gained was this piece of footage. The jellies become my signature diffusion material. Soft and luminous. Beautiful and seemingly fragile, but in the end they survived while I was down 2 cameras. I realized that that which appears fragile is actually the most resilient.

Aquatic

2009-01-01T21:58:00.004-05:00

My Waikiki photographs. Working around the idea that the sea has a memory of its own experience.

Reaching Toward Infinity

2008-11-25T21:37:00.014-05:00

Video clip from Reaching Toward Infinity, 2008 by Anna Peach
This video was informed by my investigation into optical refraction and Infinity theory. This piece used prisms as both the subject and object used for the creation. I replaced the broken lens on my old icefishing camera with a piece of crystal from a chandelier, then used the remainder of the prisms as the subject. In the editing room, I created a two track video with the same video chain playing in two opposite directions (one forward, one backwards) so that for one instance they meet.

Modern Art Timeline

2008-10-10T11:01:00.004-04:00

Moeraki, by Anna Peach, mixed media on canvas,36x24"

Shifting into autumn, my motivation also calms and returns me to sculpture and painting. The hot, busy summer days that overexposed my video and left me bobbing neck deep in all waters, glamorous or otherwise are now drawn to a close. It was this shift in time that has me reexamining my finds in New York. I went out searching for inspiration and found it discarded in my neighborhood in the form of a stained, but gorgeous moment from Pop Art History. My neighbor decided to ditch a 4x5 foot painting by an artist who would become internationally known just three years after setting down the paintbrush with the completion of this work. He became an OP Artist who really invented the installation art movement. Somehow, my neighbor spilled something like coffee down the entire minimalist work. I had wanted to rob it of the stretcher bars, beautifully made of maple. But then I realized that I loved the art. It is a fragment in the Modern Art continuium that set the stage for artists like myself. So out of respect for all artists, I am momentarily swiching hats to be a part time art conservator, and just go back to buying my own stretchers for the sake of history.

The Contemporary Museum -Honolulu

2008-10-01T10:39:00.003-04:00

Thank you for the kind words from the artists, Contemporary Museum members,TCM employees and the Textile Society Conference participants. I am happy to have the work back in Hawaii and to be a part of this wonderful exhibition. The show will continue through January.

The Witness

2008-09-07T19:29:00.009-04:00

In the sun, just past the shadow
of the Natural History Museum
sits a white shopping bag of orchids.
Robbed of their containers,
roots reaching like grey worms after rain.
I think of the ghosts
of the scientific explorers
who must roam the halls that lay
behind those nineteen inches of granite
to be forever near their prey.

They must think back to a time
before malarial dreams swept away their lives
in jungles they were not suited for.
Linen clad days spent pointing up trees
where native guides would climb
to stuff plants into cotton bags.
Their parasitic nature was loved,
coddled and named like a newborn.
Thirteen letters in Latin that seemed too much
for a fragile one who would burn in the light.

Eventually they grow and turn inward,
nurturing leaf over bloom.
An act of strength mistaken for death
in a store somewhere nearby.
Bringing an Uptown salesman to abandon them
in an unmarked bag on the corner of Columbus.
Walking away as if leaving a crime scene
brushing evidence from soiled hands,
turning chin over shoulder to see if someone
will know what to do with the captives now freed.

2008-08-31T21:53:00.004-04:00

Clip from "Wonder," video, 2007, by Anna Peach. From the series "Bait."

It was midway through an exhibit at the Whitney that I began to rethink the roles of chance and control in my work. So many focus their attention on my highly controlled sculptural works where everything is ordered, realigned, yet teetering on chaos. They are in many ways temporary and unsatisfactory solutions to problems. Showing my interest in paradox. These inquiries often lead to questions of how I could work in an opposite fashion in my video. The series in Newfoundland is greatly a study of chance, not unlike a visual field notebook of a scientific explorer, capturing my investigation in a series of hundreds of takes that explored the edge of the sea in detail that only a scientist could love. I considered it a visual mapping technique. In a place where all things converge: Atlantic/Arctic, deep/shallow sea creatures, sun/wind/water, as the moon pushes the tides, it is hard to decide when to stop. Every day brought a new combination that would play out like a card game. Those videos, as seen in posts prior, examine the ocean from the vantage point of just below the surface, which would be the angle of a drowning person. It is the most chaotic part of the ocean; a point of convergence. Due to it being where all things combine, chance became the subject. Never knowing where your camera would end up or if you would see it again was all in a day's work.

So I returned to the "Bait" series as a means of exploring the ways in which I could increase the amount of control I had in my video. When the storms came, I had to withdraw from the sea's edge for my own safety. The "Bait" series became a meeting point for the crows and I. They were trainable, allowing me to film them in flashes here and there. The other factors like the angle of view and the timing of their approach were still well beyond my control. I learned that they watched me as I was watching them, a sort of double surveillance. It also felt more like a collaboration rather than a bribe. The bribe became a ball of Wonder bread that I crafted and let them eat. The "Ball of Wonder," as I called it became my way of seeing their social network, while they were also watching me.

Searching

2008-08-21T22:12:00.007-04:00

More than a few of you use my videos to lull yourselves to sleep at night. Normally I would not be very happy about it, but I do the same. It seems that for whatever reason these do the trick. I remember curling up next to the fire in Newfoundland and watch these clips one after the next. They were just long enough to soothe you, but just short enough to make you wonder what was next. I would watch til I could not keep my eyes open, then usually the camera or laptop would turn itself into sleep mode as I pulled the yarn afghan to my ears. They were my lullaby as I stayed at the edge of the sea, half way between the two homes that I knew: Hawaii and Switzerland.

It was a strange place to rebuild a life, a lonely place that forced introspection for the sake of self preservation. Most of the artists came to the residency, drank and drugged themselves silly and then talked a lot, thinking themselves better than the locals. Others pulled inward, taking long walks along the cliff's edge, while I climbed down the cliff to the seas edge. I remember having a talk with two other artists on a swift hike through a series of thickly wooded trails that all look exactly the same. People get lost there, and are never found again. You have to mark your trail in a way that you remember, making arrows out of pine cones and dropping a glove to help you home. A bent branch means something to someone, you learned to never disturb what could be anothers lifeline. I also remember the look on one artist's face when we spoke of the isolation and danger. She grew very pale upon realizing she had greatly underestimated the place. She mistook it for rustic and quaint. She never thought that she would not be found if she got lost. The Coast Guard circles about in a helicopter for good reason. Someone, somewhere is always being sought. If they are found is another story.

I returned home one night after a 14 hour day which started as a overly long hike and ended in a search for Caplin fish with two off duty Canadian Coast guards and a Medi-vac nurse. It ended up being much more than a talk on a stony beach. They took me into their hard, stormy lives in the High Arctic. Their lives took shape one story at a time, some happy stories of saving lives and other stories that ended in long silences where you felt the ending in the pit of your stomach. A year later, I still feel those stories. I drank a beer, then another beer, threw sticks for the dog,learned the two step from the nurse and sealed the day with a ceremonial exchange of bandanna for cap. We never found the Caplin fish. It didn't matter. I crept back home to a worried artist who thought I should have been home already. She was right, I was late. We sat under the stars and I tried to retell what I learned that day. I was happy that she was looking for me. Upon coming to NYC I ended up meeting that same artist's student right in the building where I live. I keep an eye on her student now, making sure she stays inspired, I figure it is the least I can do. As for the Coast Guard They should be way up there by now, and the nurse should be in her new post at Rankin Inlet delivering babies on the fly.

Sleep well friends.

Fertility Suit 2

2008-08-07T23:35:00.009-04:00

Fertility Suit 2, Anna Peach, Invasive seeds (Job's Tears) on clothing.

This piece is part of the exhibit at The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu that runs through 1/12/2009.

Tidal

2008-08-03T13:14:00.017-04:00

Surveillance is the story of this work. As I travel and explore the outer fringe of the planet. I study the earth by watching, one inch at a time.

I think back to how I really began my investigation of the ocean, and I have to credit Fiji for being the tipping point. I was midway through a year in the South Pacific. I was behind schedule due to my extension of time in the Cook Islands. From my onetime home base in Chicago, I had sent myself book parcels wrapped on brown paper. Scrolled across them said my name, poste restante, Main Post Office, Suva, Fiji. I remember the warnings that ensued and the "you will never see them again" comments that followed. I had my doubts only when my stay in the Cooks was doubled due to my exhibition in Rarotonga, and the exciting Cook island mini media blitz that followed and kept me from Fiji. The chance of my parcel sitting there waiting for me was greatly diminished because of it, and I knew it.

I walked into the stately, cavernous space that is the Suva Post Office. Daylight streamed in and the broad shouldered Fijians directed me to a stairway and the parcel room that may or may not hold my package. I remember the heat, and the overwhelming immediacy of a new country. The Fijian language sounded abrupt at first, but it would became familiar in the upcoming months. I remember the fan spinning about and the stern faces that would turn so quickly into glowing smiles. It took a while for the man to reappear with my package. It also took a bit for me to identify it. It came slowly across the sea, and it showed. I figured that I probably was in a similar state myself. I mean I myself had a severe burn scar from an exuberant Tahitian motorcycle trip down a volcano. The other leg had wounds from the infamous razor coral of the South Seas. My package was equally battered, but also still functional.

I could tell by the smiles all around that there was a bit of relief in finding this dusty torn parcel that had arrived an amazing three months early. I held it, smelled the paper, and rocked it in my arms with joy. It was home wrapped in paper. Inside it was a paperback copy of Moby Dick, which my forward thinking self had decided that it would be the right time to tie into the work. What proved to be much more important was the other, smaller volume that was in the package. Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. That was the clincher. That book was the glue for my entire Fijian exploration, and well beyond. I knew that I has planned on getting my scuba diving certification, and I wanted a book that was all about the strangeness of the sea.

So it was with that book that I began to investigate the sea intimately. I would read it in my thatched hut with the kerosene lantern every night, then wake at dawn to be plunged into the unknown sea. The weather was rather dodgy for learning to dive. The sea was often rough and the rains came frequently, my dive manual was in German just because it was all that was left. I looked at the pictures. I also found that I had to have so many lead weights to even get me to sink, nearly double of what I should have for my weight. I was working myself into a frenzy with thoughts of giant squid and other unexplainable creatures that I might come face to face with. Then I would cling to the side of a dive boat and plunk myself in to face any number of things. All in all it was a dizzying experience.

The Euro travellers acted like it was as basic as a trip to the market. Poisonous sea snakes swirled past your masked face, while giant outer reef sharks loomed menacingly all in front of the rather bored gazes of my dive comrades. I on the other hand ended up face to face with many of a Verne-esque creature, and I felt that it was anything but boring. I at times feared that I would spit out my regulator with excitement. I was cranked on adrenaline while others appeared to be lethargically watching the discovery channel. I was giddy about the significance of our siteings when we gathered around the communal table for lunch. The Fijians though, were most intrigued as they questioned why one would put themselves in front of a shark. I did not have much of an answer. I was not just cranked on adrenaline, but most importantly Verne. The sea was relatively unknown, and to myself and Jules, that meant adventure and all that came with it.

The Verne frenzy perhaps hit its climax soon after I returned from swimming across the strait from Waya island to Kandavu. It was the channel of great depth, where the sharks tour about and feed. I was on my way back when I caught site of something sitting on the rocks on Waya. I knew the timing was critical as I contemplated my return swim back to the island. If I grew too tired I could appear wobbly and approachable as bait to the waiting sharks. I also could get swept out as the tides changed. But whatever sat on that rock would not be there in the morning, that I also knew. So back I went, only to discover a perfect Nautilus shell sitting there on the rock. I stuffed it into the side of my bikini like a bond girl's gun and swam back across the channel of sharks.

I returned breathless to my hut and another tourist was worried about me. He held his hand behind his back, as did I. We each pulled out the exact same gift for each other. Two perfect Nautilus shells were held, one in each of our palms. That would secure that the next eight years would be spent together, before utilizing the very nature of the Nautilus, the freedom to leave its shell home and live an independent life. It was that night that upon turning the page in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea that Mr. Verne revealed the name of Captain Nemo's submarine, The Nautilus.

I was too enthralled and caught in adventure and love to realize the doom of my situation. 20,000 Leagues isn't exactly a romance after all. The warning signs were all around, including not so subtle references to Homer's Odyssey, with the lead character's name in each book translating to "nobody." This forthcoming life chapter would lead me to also question if my own name was fast becoming "nobody" for the sake of the beloved. Even the shared name of the accommodation and the stretch of reef where I lived and learned to dive were doomed to be titled after the French explorer Dumont D'Urville's wrecked ship The Astrolabe. Which is also alluded to in Verne's book. Yet I did not realize the significance of it all, or maybe just ignored it. Now, nearly ten years later, and after an accidental visit to the ficticious departure port of the Nautilus submarine in Long Island, I came to realize that this book, and the Homer epic are the foundation of my later sea videos.

Each of the above characters had to face a great monster, be it cyclops or squid or other kinds, both internal and external. My own monster facing would show in my art, from a giant octopus like dress that hovered above your head, ready to catch you in its net, to seeded suits of armour. Military camoflauge soon became a cloak, and new aquadic animal species appeared in my studio tanks, mysterious and well armoured. The work on one had does not seem linear, but when viewed through this lens, it shows some connectivity. So it is from this point that I have begun to examine my Verne inspired decade of life that still has nearly two years to go.

I end this post with thaughts back to the French woman who I met at the green and white colonial hotel that sat on the hill above Suva. I sat with her over morning tea and toast explaining to her my love of this book, my love of life and my new found love for a stranger. After a short sparatic summary of some of the above story, she turned to me and simply smiled. She was a professor and her graduate thesis was on the books of Jules Verne.

The Vertical Migration

2008-07-30T10:03:00.005-04:00

It is the largest migration on earth happening every day while we sleep. These creatures, beautiful in their transparency swim thousands of feet from the ocean's depth to feed. It is called the Vertical Migration. They are male and female, with wings and horns, deep and shallow sea dwellers which possess a grace that I never will. This creature, the size of my pinkie finger is just big enough to hold all of my metaphors.

I nicknamed this one Herbie, the hermaphroditic Sea Angel of the Arctic. They are special in more ways than I can name. It navigates its way upward through the polar seas with what appears to be a wound in the center of its chest. Upon closer observation you realize that the Sea Angel navigates the gauntlet of predators with its heart exposed, like a signal flare within. Navigating the earth with nothing to hide.

Opening scene from yet to be titled video by Anna Peach, filmed in Newfoundland, Canada, June 2007.

13 seconds of calm

2008-07-27T19:16:00.003-04:00

Tidal pool video clip, Newfoundland, Canada. June, 2007, by Anna P.

Tide pool videos

2008-07-26T23:45:00.003-04:00

Tide pool video stills, Newfoundland, Canada, 2007 by Anna P.
This is one of the calm little videos that caught my eye in the last days. The idea was simple: use the diffusion created by the temperature changes between sun warmed surface and the melted icebergs.

Rethinking Newfoundland

2008-07-26T17:44:00.011-04:00

It is the second day that I sit at the computer trying my best to compile Newfoundland video. I watch the sky knowing darn well that if starts raining, as it looks like it will, I will drop it in a split second so to make a new video. It is nothing new to report that I have absolutely no relationship with editing. I slowly build knowledge in the area, but feeling no connection to it as well as being trapped indoors seems to build resentment. I want to get rained on, wind burnt, sunburned with new footage in hand rather than being pale and comfortable in the editors chair.

I have been reviewing footage that I never really had time to look at. Amazing surprises were there. I particularly like the video where I stumble upon the plankton bloom. Tight, fractured scenes that were trying to decipher what it was that I was seeing. First thinking it was a lens flare, then realizing it was life. A living flowing permeable red carpet of life. Keep in mind too that I was shooting remote, up on the rocks keeping one eye on the always angry sea, and the other eye on the glare on the screen. I was three feet from being swept in. Three feet from death at all times. I took every video as if it was my last, considering that the pull dropped the camera to the bottom and held it there hovering like a yellow warning to myself, I never took anything for granted. Those entire two weeks of the bloom filming were very dangerous. One day I watched the sea for an entire hour before going to its edge. For hyperactive me, sitting with a mug of coffee, all geared up ready to roll and not filming was hard. I paced back and forth, watched the sky turn over seven times, while the sea just looked very unpredictable. I am not going to pretend that I was able to frame much of that time. The sea was filming, I was trying to keep one camera in, one camera and myself out of the sea.

I Made 115 or so-20min videos during that artist residency left an amazing collection that can appear daunting at times. The great thing is that so much of it really footage that I love. There are redundant segments, but really about anyone you grab is worth a look. The exception being the interviews of me looking very wind burnt (see me casting a boat in seaweed above) in Carhart bibs and lug boots trying to explain why I am launching a camera off the slipway, over the cliff, through the blowhole or shoving the camera under the ice. My words say nothing. I rattle on in vain with eyes on the waves. The images say everything.

Exerpt from Travel Log Newfoundland,
June 1, 2007
"Dipped to freezing, so not a great time to dry seaweed. If I get them all cleaned and dry, it will simply be a matter of assembly. (Waterhorse project casting the boat in seaweed) This shoreline seaweed turns purple black when dry. It is the most accessable variety-able to pluck great quanities off the rocks by the boat launch. Seaweed looses a bit of itself when the sea water is taken away. So...hike to the iceberg or stay here warm and working...The wind cut and the sea calmed, so I should check to see if it(iceberg) is still there. I'll have a walk toward town and have a look along the coast."
June 2, 2007
"Nope, It was gone. The iceberg gone and another dead seal washed in...the seal looked peaceful in death. Silver dapled with freckles. Still think I should have been a wildlife tracker or something. Seem to have an eye for it. Problem of late seems to be that all of the creatures besides the neighbor dogs, the crows or any multi celled creatures above ocean diatoms I am only finding after they are dead. Not a lot of "tracking" involved. I returned back to the cabin to bake a cake, then got back onto the rocks to turn over all the seaweed to dry the other side before dusk. Think the neighbors smelled the cake, as they seem to be circling about on ATV's zooming along the kitchen wall"

A Long Weekend

2008-07-23T19:54:00.002-04:00

I spent my weekend on the other side of the big pond. I tore through suitcases of photographs and searched boxes for the right slides, the right art, the right memories. With time, it is the strangest things that hold memories. Crumpled photos of children in a distant village, a photo of goldfish in a plastic bag awaiting their launching into a bathtub pond; stray cats, kids and Kiwi birds. My life captured in a disorganized timeline tied into sloppy bundles with ribbon or twine. They are the fractured moments that came to summarize a sense of home for a traveller who never stays too long.

Metamorphosis

2008-07-02T22:36:00.003-04:00

Metamorphosis. palm fiber, horse hair, with lauhala. 45"x16"x9"2005 by Anna Peach

Adaptation

2008-07-02T21:01:00.003-04:00

Other Possible Planets, coral growth on golf ball recovered from Pacific reef.

Mounted in plaster on panel. 24"x24" by Anna Peach

I am trying to adapt to my city life, but write about my ties to nature. Living on concrete but reminiscing about the jungle, the islands, the ocean. A directness, raw, churning life. I lay in the grass when I can. I realize that when I tell the story of my life, all is about the creatures. I chit chat about exotic blooms and invasive vines. Phosphorescent plankton in the bellies of squid. That is where I dwell. I speak of harpooning techniques for Moray, to the amazement of strangers. This has become a normal life for me and now I tell these stories in a densely packed city while gazing upon rooftops. I feel a bit like the animals at the zoo who adapt to the new conditions, but every day for a few minutes contemplate how they got there and why.

In the midst of things

2008-06-22T14:48:00.003-04:00

I am in the midst of a very powerful time. A time of change, growth and an increasing demand for continued courage. The rains fall everytime I want to skate, so I write insted. Eithor one is a place for me to find myself in this city maze of hungry individuals who are struggling to find meaning. New York is a tyrant in so many ways. It is easy to get burried alive and loose all sense of your self daily, and hourly at times. That is the test that confronts you everyday. Can you be strong enough to hold up your beliefs. Can you stand tall, even if you stand alone. I navigate through strangers somehow still able to be graced with beautiful souls who seem to have known me forever. That is my gift, perhaps: the ability to recognize the extraordinary aspects of another in a split second, and still manage to have the courage to trust them before they slip away into their course. Living from the gut and managing to still believe in the world. I have met some amazing souls here in subways and dead end job assignments. They know my favorite books, artists, places and secrets. It makes every moment full of possibility. I feel like I am involved in some existential battle, and fortunately this month I have been graced with allies.

Camouflage Union Square

2008-06-06T21:10:00.005-04:00

It ended up being more powerful to face the rain than the sun. It is always that way. You say that you want to have things go perfectly with clear skies, warmth and glow around but you really don't want it that way. Ambiguity and chaos are more interesting. Face the cold and the shadows and then you have something to remember. Stand in silence, cloaked as nature, in this private act shared.

A Woman Divided

2008-05-25T11:45:00.004-04:00

I am in the field, filming and trying to formulate concepts on the fly as I buzz between subway stops with my mobile video unit. The city awoke like a giant as the weather broke just a couple days ago. Fleet week is upon us, and the city could not be any more surreal. Thousands in white meandering beneath the neon blink of Times Square, Wall Street, and everywhere in between. My first role models were Navy men cousins with mermaid and hula girl tattoos...so I still feel like a peace keeper divided as I film octagon images of marching white legs.

Apparation

2008-05-12T21:57:00.002-04:00

This week I did an abnormal amount of introspection as I walked the city. I walked in the middle of the night and criss crossing the streets in between jobs. I discovered fantastic places right around the corner from where I have been living for six months. I was seeking to find potential in the common, as is usual for me. Maybe focusing on the idea of strength against adversity more than usual in the past week. I made a lot of progress with both my editing and my subject selection, even a few advances in the area of style. Then what do I see through my lens, but what appears to be an apparation of a little girl. It seems to be perfectly impossible which was just what I was looking for. I think in German an apparation is 'Geistererscheinung' but I may have added a few letters, for it seems even too long for German! But no matter what you call it, it made for a wonderful four minute video where the impossible seems to come to life.

Inspired Walk

2008-05-05T21:33:00.004-04:00

It was an interesting day today. Some healing, a chance to rest, a chance to eat. I laid in the sun, discovered a lake in the middle of uptown. Took the time to notice Spring before it goes away. I looked at light and shadow, talked about art with a four year old on the crosstown. I walked and walked. I came home to find my neighbor was throwing away a giant framed color photo of Milford Sound, New Zealand a place where I have stood. I watched my new videos that only make sense when seen as video. They fall apart as stills. The people blend into facades and the buildings melt into sky in kaleidoscopic images.

Chandelier

2008-05-04T17:03:00.004-04:00

stills from chandelier video by Anna Peach, May 2008, New York City

When I was a child I used to try to view the world through my kaleidoscope or my View master. Wandering around a field trying to see the rows of corn or hundreds of chickens through falling pieces of colored plastic. This is not so far from that. I made this series of videos with thoughts of a friend up north who is leaving a place that she loves for financial survival. I wished her strength in the best possible way I could think of...by making a video tribute that speaks of the sea but isn't the sea. It is a video whose subject and difusion lens are a broken New York City Chandelier that I found in the dumpster last week. I wanted her to see that I too miss the place where she is leaving. I am haunted by it. The icebergs even came by early to say goodbye to her. The inspiration stays within you regardless of where you are. You can find an iceberg's beauty in a city dumpster, if you are inspired enough to look.

So I began my 'Art Sunday' on a mission...

I took up my broken ice camera that fell victim to the rocks of the Hudson river this past January. I had then managed to save it before the electronics were flooded. Its micro glass lens was shattered so I figured that maybe I could treat it like a pinhole camera of sorts and fashion a new lens.I scraped out the old broken lens and exchanged it with a piece of chandelier Chrystal, then today I viewed the world through it.

These octagon planes captivated me to try to do a tribute to the Japanese scientist who froze water Chrystal and photographed them...more on that later I am off to film the great NYC chandeliers.

Camouflage Performance

2008-05-04T11:42:00.005-04:00

I have just received an acceptance email that will allow me to perform in a festival this month. If you are in the New York City area and would like to participate in 'Camouflage' please go to the 'complete profile' section (seen at right side of screen) and email me.

Below is an exerpt from my explaination that I provided for the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu

"... measuring approximately 131”x131” It is a piece of government issue desert camouflage that I have altered by adding hundreds of hand cut pieces of Hawaiian shirts. These shirt pieces were then hand tied to the existing camouflage to create a quilt like effect. I originally got the idea when I discovered that Honolulu lei makers were put to work during WWII making handmade camouflage. I thought of the phrase that we hear so frequently, that a family has ‘military ties.’ I decided to make a more palpable interpretation by utilizing used clothing to represent the people of Hawaii, and hand tying this representation in place. "

I later learned that entire buildings in Honolulu were covered in handmade camouflage so to try to make the city look like the jungle.

Most of you that know my earlier Hawaii pieces know that I frequently use the idea of camouflage as a reference to species self-preservation. It has become another way to tie us back to the earth for our own sakes.

2008-04-24T11:49:00.004-04:00

One Year Ago

2008-04-24T11:37:00.004-04:00

It was one year ago that I began my artistic explorations in Newfoundland. This image remains locked in my mind, as it was the view from my cabin. I remember venturing upon the rocks past midnight to listen to it. Icebergs have a voice, a presence that is easy to personify.

A journal entry on May 25 reads
"The fog closed in last night at about eight. I sat watching the remains of an iceberg that disappeared before my eyes. The fog closed like a velvet curtain and twenty minutes later it opened again, but the iceberg had moved along on its journey, shielded by the veil of mist."

Seven Days

2008-04-20T10:48:00.005-04:00

I spent my hours below Mercury's winged feet,

where champagne and blue blood flow from

the veins of Statuario Venatato,

cut and faced to see its own image like Narcissus at the pool.

Wing tipped collars flutter like doves in a Charleston stolen from the time when Robber Barron's autographed the stairswith a monogram rather than ink on the page,

to prove that they owned everything including the letter.

An Ecuadorian shoe shine in the heart of Hell's Kitchen

in high chairs with old boys now taller with a woman in their midst.

Catching their hair cuts and coffees between trains.

I later polish crystal for their flock on terraces high above Fifth.

while the sun sinks deep into the Hudson;

their inner fires stoked with Red Label.

They speak of paperless offices while clutching cocktail napkins like butterflies in their fists.

They return as Pale Male to their mate in waiting,

talons clutching Chardonnay rather than sticks.

Under fire beneath Magnolia's blush falling

in courtyards where lawyers in training study laptops

while I learn the sky.

Filing past slipping on nature,

leaving tread marks in petal flesh.

I shop for genres on a park bench dressed in

shirt sleeves and tie.

My prose is too formless for a poem,

To rambling for essay, reminding me of

a onetime professor with the crisis of mid-life

taking students as suitors and pen as witness to shame.

Spring announces itself in midtown at midday.

Women wave Victoria's secret bags as flags of surrender

to men who tip hardhats like stagecoach dandies.

A chandelier waiting curbside in a Rubbermaid tub,

lying as a victim to spring cleaning.

Bronze arms reaching through rainbows of its own creation.

The waiter trades uniform from black

to royal blue to desert camouflage

because he got the call that officers are needed in the desert.

War pays better than pouring Cosmos for office girls.

He says he's got nothing to loose.

By day his battle is for custody in courtrooms

where he walks the line of contempt.

I think of a country so proud of it's neutrality,

but whose soldiers shoot wives when they turn to go.

Bartenders speak of The Towers like a wound

that bleeds upon the glassware.

Pushing hi balls into order in hopes that they will

cover the hole in the sky.

The Albanian is blinded to beauty

even though it surrounds him.

Like leaning into poems, too close to decipher

when your eyes blur words into one.

So he leaves to go hunting without checking

to find that his net was already full.

My Booker is asking if I need assistance

with the situation that I left behind.

His mentioned connections to friends

who know how to handle these things.

I skate to the Pope but instead join the Tibetans

in hopes that that He would understand.

I am passed by a nun on a Schwinn who flies

like an angel through the helicopters of Riverside Park.

2008-04-17T13:15:00.003-04:00

Six months in NYC

2008-04-15T15:10:00.004-04:00

It has been a blur of time filled with so many strangers
walking at a quick pace in the city that never sleeps,
yet seems to sleep more than me.
I avoid times square at all costs
I bought a tux in Chinatown
I have been feeding diplomats.
I sat with Anthony Hopkins in a screening,
had Phillip Glass join my New Years day inspiration.
I have remembered again how to dance.
I have walked the back corners of the Waldorf
and fed the United Nations candied figs
I poured rum for the Dominican Republic.
I watched comedians act as a minister
and cooked bok choi in Long Island.
I filmed stinging nettles in aqua blue tanks,
learned to love the Hudson as it is.
I walked the Bronx to discover spring
in the faces of a school field trip.
one day spent speaking in five languages
I bought red dresses with intent.
I walked in a parade as a giraffe,
I helped children believe in the kindness of Santa.
I bought orchids and mangoes to relieve the pull
back to the islands.
I made friends of strangers, helped the elderly cross Fifth.
I cheered for prodigy's who blushed in their youth.
I asked questions of poets
and read the smile lines of the people on the 5 am train.
I dreamed again of possibility.

Feed- the video series

2008-03-29T20:16:00.007-04:00

With the final day of DiVA being Sunday, I have decided to lay low tonight and recoup with the videos of my own design before seeing the blitz of other artist's works. I realized that feeding is a core theme fit for a quad of videos set in three locations. Feed-Eel, features Moray's in Hawaiian waters, Feed-Fish also in Hawaii, Feed-Swan set under lake Zurich, Switzerland, and Feed-Crow series in Newfoundland, Canada.

In the above featured stills from Feed-Eel, I floated a subway submarine sandwich across a lagoon in Hawaii and filmed the ensuing attack in the minutes that followed. Filmed in two feet of water...I pretty much had the ocean to myself after showing the video to a few on the beach. Hey, whatever works.

Northern Lights Below the Sea

2008-03-23T20:04:00.004-04:00

underwater video Stills from my plankton pursuits in NFLD

It is really hard to try to explain why I can be captivated with the bottom end of the food chain. I have done my best to focus on life in the Grand Banks, and hope my artwork can illuminate some issues for a better future there. The bottom of the food chain is our future as well. It is hard to imagine that all of the red that you see above may be the saving grace for life on this planet. Scientists believe that plankton may offset global warming. My other friend, the sea butterfly is a indicator as well, but they face possible extinction in under 50 years due to the rising acidity in the ocean. They will no longer be able to produce their minute shells. Clione Limacina, my Arctic dwelling Naked Sea Butterfly/Sea Angel that is featured in my video would loose the lesser sea butterfly as a food source; the Baleen whale in turn would loose the Sea Angel/Naked Sea Butterfly. So basically we are screwed. Some scientists believe that if we can artificially increase numbers of plankton, we can turn around the food chain and save our own tails.

If you look at the three clear white shapes in the bottom image, they are Pleurobrachia pileus, or the Sea Gooseberry that have arrived on the scene to dine on the glut of surging plankton.

OK enough for the Easter Sunday Science lesson...

Planktonic Seas

2008-03-18T21:41:00.004-04:00

"Where there's life, there's hope." -Terence

This week I have been wading through over a hundred DVDs that I made in Newfoundland. I realized that I have yet to really relax and view most of them. So that will be the ongoing project...trying to figure out what exactly I have captured and why. The what is always easier than the why.

Japan

2008-03-14T15:50:00.004-04:00

This is an article that came out ages ago, but with all of my travel it was never posted. If you click on the image, you should be able to read it (in Japanese.)

The Ocean is my Bathtub/The Bathtub is the Ocean

2008-03-05T13:06:00.004-05:00

Video stills by be, from the video of the same name. 2007 Newfoundland

Officium

2008-03-05T10:11:00.009-05:00

Newfoundland Kelp

There is a CD that I own that was recommended to me by a punk rocker who worked in a Borders in Chicago. I had just received my first and only tip for my elaborate floral designs a few blocks North on Michigan Ave. I walked in and decided to use the 'tip' to upgrade my inspirational music. I walked up to this man who most were trying to avoid. It is almost an unwritten code. I often do the same, but in reverse. I seek the creatives, remaining a bit leery of the suit clad tribe. I walk up to him and plea my case. I note my travels, my love of change, diverse taste and of course share my soul within two minutes. I ask only one thing, "If you were to just buy three Cd's tonight, what would they be." It was almost if he was waiting for this opportunity to be able to share his wealth of music knowledge with an otherwise unreceptive audience. He lunged forward speaking quickly and taking long strides through the space. He had a practiced way of weaving through the labyrinth of the earphone wearing customers to gently nudge his way into the the richness of music that would never reach popularity with those seeking to be considered normal. He pulled out Officium, by Jan Garbarek and the Hillard Ensemble, he pulled out Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane's Autumn Serenade and Gavin Bryars, The Sinking of the Titanic. It was a frighteningly broad range of music. He turned to me and said "think you can handle it?" I said "Yes, Sold."

So off I went to figure out why this music was brought into my life by a punk rock guardian angel. It took me over ten years to figure out the inspiration of Officium, which resulted in my artwork, Spirit House. It took a few years more to figure out my need for Bryars work. I ended up creating my Grand Banks series from a perspective of a drowning person. Focusing on the bottom of the surface of the sea. I listened to each Cd repeatedly. I used to sink myself into a tub of water and listen to The Sinking of the Titanic with ears below the surface in the initial days of my ownership of the Cd. Twelve years later in Newfoundland, where the Titanic lays off shore, I filled a bathtub with freshly harvested sea weed and repeated the process. I made a cast of a boat as some readers may recall. Taking pounds of kelp up the cliff and weaving it onto an abandoned boat like a skeleton ghost ship. Why did Bryars work inspire this? and also why did I nearly miss my flight because I had to go back and grab this Cd that had been selected by a stranger years before. It had crossed the world with me and was not being listened to due to my partner who hated the music. Perhaps it was a liberation for both the Cd and myself.

In doing so, in some small way my work seemed to also liberate the dead who had drowned on the spot where I felt compelled to work. The people of this place were at first angered, then relieved that some woman from afar had found it in herself to take on the death of so many strangers and find beauty and hope in a form that all could watch on a little humming laptop. Messages of support still trail in from up there, an occasional email from the Coast Guard, a letter from the quilt maker that fed me hamburgers when I was cold. Best wishes from the Medivac Nurse who is now back in the Artic, dedicated support from a gifted young painter. Our lives become interwoven in the process. That is the greatest gift from this desire for understanding. It allows me the patience to retrace the steps of others, and find friends along the way. I repeat their lives, but with an artist's hands and heart. I learned about the sea by immersing myself in it, by shivering as I sunk my arms into it to lower a camera and watch the seaweed grow. By sleeping in a bathtub full of seaweed, that slowly oozed its jelly core into a gelatinous blur that left my skin like silk. "Oh gross!" some of the other artist's replied, until I offered the skin of my forearm as evidence of the power of the stuff. How is that possible, that something so "gross" can become so beautiful in anothers hands? That is the artistry of life, finding what other's cannot see.

So I trust that other's have this ability as well in different areas, just like the punk rocker who helped sway the inspiration for my life. If we let them help, who knows were our lives will lead. I would never have guessed that I would listen to Officium several hundred times in the course of a multi year art piece. I would never have thought that I would not tire of the work, and it was natural to begin and end each day in it's presence. When I went to Newfoundland, I brought it as well, but upon trying to play it, it failed over and over again humming and clicking until it simply read no Cd. I guessed it wasn't the soundtrack for that time. The Titanic Cd was of course the one to have. It was the right choice that led me down a new trail. I felt a little sad that I had played Officium until I broke it, like a doll that had been loved too much. That is, until today. I decided out of the blue to try once again to try to play my old friend, and after ten months of not working, it played again. What does this mean? I am not sure, but I do know enough to be guided.

Planktos Reinstalled

2008-02-26T15:57:00.007-05:00

A few months back you may recall my adventures in the windswept north eastern Atlantic ocean. I was lost in the changes of the ocean and captivated by the vertical migration of comb jellies, naked sea butterflies and zoo plankton. Not to mention the bubblegum pink krill. Although I feel a world away from that as I stumble through the streets of NYC, I realized that I have the sea right here with me in the form of 125 videos and these cork, silk, bone and cotton constructions that I gave the Greek name 'Planktos' to. You may remember that they were a part of the environmental show that I was a part of at Eastern Edge Gallery in Newfoundland. When the original piece sold, I found myself desperate to try to find the nearly obsolete cork floats that were one time a staple there. Cork is gone, we have destroyed the cork trees and now plastic sits in it's place. The original cork I found under the slipway tangled in a 50 fathom Herring net. It was my secret haunt between the tides and also between prying glances of one of the other artists who decided that whatever I began collecting, she would as well. So I had to sneak about and show only my trusted comrades Aleks and Grant as well as my 10 year old neighbor boy. I mean only the most trusted friends will appreciate me showing up at their door with a bucket of cod skulls, some mermaid's purses and a variety of flotsam. Ah those were the days. The rain in NYC leaves me wishing that I was watching the crashing waves, but for now I will sleep beneath my Planktos mobile.

Camouflage

2008-02-21T19:16:00.004-05:00

Miyoko in full camouflage. Central Park, NYC, Feb 2008

So I am sort of dragging this post out for a while, but I keep thinking that a little more of the story is revealed in the images. I think Miyoko looks quite content to be in the full regalia. I think that I need to get back to art making again. The beginning of the month was a fury of creativity that was soon replaced by dollar earning and illness. I need to get a couple of pieces completed and submitted to a show back in Honolulu. I feel a world away from Hawaii right about now. But the sun shines bright and tonight somewhere in that sky lies a full moon.

As American as baseball and...

2008-02-15T05:00:00.002-05:00

All that we were missing now was the apple pie and our America performance would be complete. Strangely intrusive and wonderfully random, I would expect nothing less from the greatest of city parks. I rather like this triangle, mostly because I want to know what in the heck was he thinking?

Camouflage-Central Park

2008-02-12T21:59:00.004-05:00

Central Park, New York City

It is hard to describe what happened next, but somehow we became just part of the whole city park scene. A brilliant NYU photo student walked up and comfortably settled into out act. She took her images and then allowed me to adorn her in camo. Miyoko was then cloked, patiently waiting as an elegant, silent Gingko. Then a Father and son joined us to play catch within a few feet of the scene above. A giant poodle tried to attack me. It was everything you want a performance to be and so much more. Interaction, reaction and possibly two of the best photographers one could hope for both on the scene. Build it and they will come, applies to art too, I guess.

we took to the streets

2008-02-04T19:17:00.001-05:00

My awesome assistant Miyoko and I took to the city to raise all kinds of questions
(and eyebrows.) We siezed the balmy sunny global-warmed Sunday to set up our performance. More to follow...

Insecurity Blanket

2008-02-01T22:43:00.000-05:00

(photo documentation of new fiber piece by me Anna P. )

After learning that we still are, and forever may continue to live at Level Orange, I decided to give my insecurity blanket a try on today. It is a 15 foot piece of government issue desert camouflage that I have altered by adding hundreds of pieces of cut Hawaiian shirts. I was thinking of Klimt's Judith series and Nick Cage's sound suits while I styled these shots. I feel that it needed to be a cloak, even though I keep trying to make it a wall hanging. Yeah wall hanging, who am I kidding? When have I ever made something that fits comfortably into one category. Maybe next I grab Miyoko-san as my fearless assistant and take it to the park...

I reshot today after a night of Klimt research. I transformed myself into the redhead 'Truth' who shines back light from the mirror of truth. Throw in a little reference to 'Hope II,' and I think I have made progress.

Crow project video

2008-01-30T20:31:00.000-05:00

(three stills from one of many...possibly too many videos I made about feeding crows)

Submerged

2008-01-23T17:53:00.000-05:00

The piece 'Seed' is submerged in waters left after a flood. It was a favorite place for me to visit in Hawaii, near Kawaihae. It was an oasis in the desert. Because you could not drive there, I was usually the only one around. This is the place where I taught myself how to use underwater video cameras of different varieties, and also where my first video camera sunk one fateful day. It was down the hill from a Hawaiian sacred site. I tried to acknowledge the spiritual nature of the area. I dream of this place.

Paper Dress, 2002 Anna P

2008-01-23T17:27:00.000-05:00

This piece was my very first in the garment inspired sculpture collection. This one is titled, Simplicity. Made from the most fragile old sewing patterns. They were given to me when the local seamstress, Mrs Hasagawa retired. She was in tears at the thought of throwing away the small mountain of papers that held the history of her labors. So I appeared on the scene, liberated the patterns in true scavenger style and then had Mrs Hasagawa over for tea to view the piece. If we only knew then that it started six manic years of garment installations!

Travels of the Mind

2008-01-18T23:03:00.000-05:00

I began my day sauntering up the East side of Manhattan looking for a gated courtyard with stairs. Maybe the New York City version of this is different than my mental picture. I am looking for a fountain, some plants, maybe a bench. Instead I find a seven-foot tall security guard in a concrete stairwell asking me about my intentions. My intentions? Well, let’s see, “I intend to get into a medical research study for the betterment of all mankind.” Mmm, too broad I guess. He asks again in the way I get asked by customs officers in airports, “Anything to declare?” Then they repeat it in the “We know you have three live octopus in a Ziploc bag, Miss” kind of tone. This guy is no different so I state that I have an appointment. I tried to dress presentably. What on earth made him zoom in on me? Why me I think, as he eyes my tote bag. I was trying to do a mental inventory of the contents: an apple, a book, wallet, journal, concert schedule, and firearms? Was that what his question turned accusation implied? I was wearing mauve pumps did he really think I was up to something wearing this impractical footwear? I realized that he was asking questions out of boredom more than anything. I sort of shuffled away as I answered and he stopped asking me things.

I found myself wandering empty hallways and vacated cubicles. It was nearly ten and none of the research staff was anywhere to be found. The locked offices were labeled with area numbers rather than room numbers. It gave a spooky feel to the psychology research, like those top secret mind control experiments that we see movies about. That idea was fresh in my mind as I walked the other night with my Santaland pal. I saw the bridge and candy striped smoke stacks that are featured in a conspiracy theory movie staring Mel Gibson. So two days later here I am walking my way through area 53 and area 54, willingly nonetheless. I find the “area” of the researcher who conducted a phone interview with me. His “area” door had his name scrolled in frantic letters on a wipe board. These were reminiscent of a note left by a hostage in hopes that someone would find their message on the palm leaf.

On the floor there is a much larger wipe board that looks as if it was left out in the rain. Abbreviated disorders in all capitals along with words like screening, submit, internal, funds, chart, flow sheet, 200/year. I wonder what all of this means, as I interpret it more as a conceptual free verse piece rather than medical research. I hear movement nearby and it turns out to be research assistants in pink sweaters and skinny jeans that accelerate their walk ever so slightly in my presence. Boy they walk slowly, “no wonder we don’t find a cure for anything.” I think to myself as they carry one over-sized binder at a time, just to make the magic last. They were walking even slower than the sales staff at Macy’s at break time. I had sat myself down at an empty cubicle near someone’s new laptop. The assistants’ converse and laugh about some female patient they found crying in the hallway. Oh my, this seemed even too harsh for emotionally distant psychiatrists in training. On another pass by they note that she was crying over a potentially life threatening medical condition. Funny stuff in area 53 I thought. I must have given my Grandmother Pearl’s look of death, because one stammered a bit before trying to change the topic. They both grew slightly uncomfortable at the notebook scribbles I was making. It took them twenty minutes to piece together that I was possibly a visiting researcher in mauve pumps. Next pass by they each carried two binders. I feel relieved knowing that the future of psychiatric medical research is in good hands.

I looked again at my watch and realized that I had arrived so early to the deserted building that I never checked the latch on his door. I knocked a cheerful knock to possibly wake him, and then quickly tried the handle. Nope. Another Doctor had scrawled in an equally creepy hand his name and area number on a garbage can. Where are all of these researchers? Were they all taken hostage just moments after lifting a Sharpie to whatever was in reach? I find myself getting restless after a twenty- minute wait, so I browse the pile of children’s books next to the free verse poetry wipe board. I read book titles like Doggies and My Shimmery Fun Time Book. Anyone being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has already been to hell and back, so I cannot picture these books helping all that much. I decide to pick up the phone and dial the researchers extension in case he is in there tied to a chair. I find no dial tone and that doesn’t surprise me considering the fire alarm had been ripped off the wall with bare wires flowing out. Hmm, maybe the line was cut in the hostage taking. At my desk I find a PTSD Protocol sheet. Probably shouldn’t have looked at the form that the Doctors must fill out, as it is pretty bleak summarization of your mental health. It is a 0 to 7 rating for how screwed up someone is, from not messed up to wacko is roughly the scale. Oops, I definitely wished that I didn’t see that. I imagine myself in the clinical trial interview trying to decipher if the Psychiatrist just made a 7 on the page. Was that a 7 or one of those sweeping European ones I would think as I tried to read it upside down. A one would give me roughly a rating of “tweaked,” I could live with that, but a seven would potentially make me the hostage taker. Tweaked would have me writing verse with a Sharpie in a bad hand, but not much more.

The red haired researcher sweeps in several minutes late and doesn’t piece together that I, the person sitting in his area cubicle is his ten o’clock. When I introduce myself as a potential research patient he drops his hands down in a “I am unarmed” gesture while asking me in overly polite, cautious words to “Please step back into the waiting area.” On the phone he had told me to appear at his “area.” Now I am being treated like a loose cannon. I am given about twelve pages to fill out with the top one being a PDSQ test booklet. Boy that was loads of fun as it made you carefully sort through your life looking for personal traumas, encroaching detachment from society, anxiety attacks, panic, isolation and depression rearing it’s head. Add to that compulsive behavior, over eating, under eating, the works. Each question on this sheet must be answered in a clear-cut black or white answer, yes or no, when really nearly every question was a shade of grey. “Did you frequently” starts many sentences. “Did you often,” starts many others. It is kind of relative. If it is noticeable is it often or frequent? Does often mean hourly, daily, weekly? Oh crap, I see a seven looming on my horizon.

I continued through my multi hour task of number making and box ticking. These forms use the sneaky strategy of overlapping time frames and questions. One column on another sheet makes you consider frequency and the other column is degree of distress it caused. I find myself at the trauma grand finale sheet checking nearly every trauma with the boxes marked “I witnessed,” or “it happened to me.” I tried to curl my hand over the answers that were so depressing just to look at, let alone experience. The natural disaster column read like a full house on poker night. Earthquakes, check, volcanic eruption, check, fire, flood, and landslides all check. Five yes’ yeah I win, or do I? I realized that the sheer number of atrocities may put a 7 on my form. I felt like I was a new patient at the Dr’s office when they want your family medical history. I try to just make looping circles around all diseases known to man and write “both sides” in bold print. Doctor’s always give me that “God, your screwed” look and try to decide if I would be a profit making patient, or if I will be a problem patient and die in the waiting room, which is not good for business. I have even had some Doctor’s say, “Really?” “No,” I want to reply, “I was just joking about the pancreatic cancer! I just wanted to make you laugh.”
Research assistants now realized that I was a potential wacko, or 7 to them and went by like a binder carrying gawker’s delay. I scrolled out the full spectrum of numbers with a whole lot of twos. Two’s were everywhere though at times I wanted them to be zeros. I had to be honest because dishonesty would help no one. I was here in part due to my Father who died shortly after our summer fishing trip that I wrote of last week. He was a WWII vet who came home with severe nerve damage and what were then termed flash backs, and now would be treated as full blown PTSD. I too, seemed incapable of having a life without some kind of trauma. I keep thinking that this will be my year, but I end up either in column a, “I witnessed,” or column b, “I experienced” the full range of human tragedy. It has been so consistent that everyone begins to question how much can the human brain handle before it shields itself out of self-protection. So that is what they were looking for. They wanted to determine if I had managed to navigate the psychological gauntlet. So every number assigned, every tick mark checked had to be honest. If they felt that I was developing PTSD like my Dad, then I would be a case study in their valuable research. If I was still handling the mountain of trauma in a restricted, but with “normal” brain and emotional responses, then I would be rejected from the study. So it was really a bit of a dilemma. In order to help people like my Father, I needed to be like him, which was to be mentally ill from witnessing horrific crimes against humanity. If I was rejected, I could not help in this study, but it would be a relief to learn that your brain is coping regardless of the onslaught. I wanted to help, but I also wanted to be well.

So two’s remained two’s except for one that was marked in the wrong column. I was finding myself glancing ahead and answering the easy black or white questions first. Thoughts of worthlessness, nope, “0,” suicidal thoughts, “0.” Those were clear and easy for me, but when I returned to the shade of grey questions I would sometimes return to the wrong answer line on this multi page, tiny print form. “Damn,” I muttered as I realized that my 2 could not be made into a zero without being obvious. Add to it that the mistake was in a column that would certainly send up a red flag. It was a question fishing for compulsive disorders that I did not have but now gave the illusion that I was trying to conceal them. Now I was muttering, “oh shit,” to myself as the assistant walked past. Great, now I am talking to myself, and on another pass by I had tears rolling down my face after having to make a detailed account of my recent account of my horrors in Switzerland. I hoped that the binder carrier would go to lunch instead of arriving in the hallway as I was switching answers, mumbling swear words, and crying. It did not help that I had a construction crew rewiring, drilling and installing doors six feet from where I was supposed to navigate my way through these probing questions. Twenty pages of questions about shock, loss, violence, assault, natural and unnatural disaster and how I have handled it.

Luckily the researcher popped on the scene with a drug test cup. That made the entire construction crew disappear. Nothing like a drug test to clear the room. It was some nifty pee, cover, and tip, settle and read gizmo that probably earned the inventor an island in Fiji. I was impressed with its simple design. The sheer poetry where form meets function, its hard to add grace to a pee cup, but someone did it. The red haired researcher walked by elated that I passed. Maybe that was what that long pause followed by a confused stammer was yesterday on the phone. When I told him that I would be in first thing in the morning, maybe he was thinking that there wasn’t enough time for all of the illicit drugs that an artist consumes to clear my system in that time frame. “You sure? Is that ok, (pause) ah, there is a drug test involved.” The topic came back again later in the interview as the pixie like councilor made a little stretch and a hand sweep across the page in an ok, lets make some room gesture. With a pen at the ready she leaned her compassionate mid twenties face to mine in a lets cut to the chase style, asking me to report all of the recreational drugs that I have tried. “Ever,” “never?” Nope. I joke about the fictitious art school award for being the only one to graduate “clean.” She laughed and scrolled an empty set sign in a space that was large enough to list every drug known to man. I may have the traumas, but at least one page was as white as snow.

I probably should have mentioned Kava, and other questionable tribal beverages and chewed fermented things, but I don’t think she was looking for anything made from pounded jungle roots. Last night the colorist that I modeled responded to my mention of exotic travel by mentioning his friend drinking cobra venom somewhere near my usual Indonesian haunts. I smiled back at his inquiry as he pushed to know if I had experienced the same. He seemed a little to eager to learn of its hallucination granting properties and I grew momentarily concerned that he could potentially be under the spell of such potion as he mixed my hair color. Thinking that his friend may have been a bit of a storyteller who really drank too many pina coladas at the Denpasar Hilton and may have thought that the former sounded more adventurous. Or maybe he really did it. Maybe he was briefly adopted into a cobra venom sucking hill tribe in Kalimantan who filed their teeth. He could have possibly donned a penis sheath and sucked down a shot of cobra juice before disembarking in his dugout canoe in Irian Jaya. I could just see the friend he was speaking of. If he looked anything like my stylist, the whole scene would have looked like a Calvin Klein model that had been rolled in mud and placed behind a line of red and white carved war shields with the cobra venom still glistening on his perfect pout. A little bit like a misadventure at an exotic day spa. I chatted about my comparatively innocent Kava experiences that left me numb and dancing till dawn at a seven-day village marriage ceremony on Kandavu. Time to rinse the color before I got to the fermented palm beverages.

It is ironic in this time of upheaval that I would look like a million bucks. I decided to use my well shaped skull to its full advantage by being a hair model once again. Last time I did that was for the Michigan Ave salons back in Chicago. I was their wild card as I had the creative mural painting job and did not want to blend in too much to the relatively conservative Chicago scene. It began right before I left business school and I guess the change in my physical appearance made it clear that I was moving on. The last couple of weeks have again really spoiled me rotten. I go from having hair that had been growing out since mid- summer to the latest cut and color from two different top NY salons. I have to say my baby faced stylist cooed at what a dramatic before and after shot it would be. I wasn't sure how to take that one. It was sort of the same reaction I had while undergoing that Indian eyebrow threading thing. I was sitting there wincing and feeling as though I was shoving my face into a fishing line and trying not to cry. She stopped suddenly after a long look at me and said, is there anything else you want to do? I curled my fingertips under to hide them from her manicure hungry gaze and was going to say yeah, my forehead needs threading. Luckily I was scared of the thread torturing woman, because I stopped short and then noticed that forehead was an option on the menu. How can she complain about me being unkempt when some people come in with a fur forehead. I mean really.
To be continued

The River Holds the Memory of Light

2008-01-13T11:57:00.000-05:00

Underwater video still from The River Holds the Memory of Light by me, Anna P... camera was repeatedly cast in to the Hudson, swept to the bottom in a current and recast. The video subject is the light refraction that diminishes as the camera is swept away from the sun. When played at 1/4 speed in reverse, the camera travels to the light.

It started with a sarcastic comment about finding beauty in the Hudson, but I took it on this week and began my first body of video work in NYC. It all began with a Sotheby's search when I was trying to date the still-life painting that I found. I discovered the work of the Hudson River Valley School who painted with romantic sweeps of light. I thought about how the Hudson was consistently abused and how an entire community fights to bring it back. As I filmed I was surrounded by whispered comments of potential fish life and the continued recovery that it makes. The Hudson is more than a river here in New York, it is a friend. This friend has seen its darkest hour, and now it is on its way back. I know from my own experience that you are most aware of the light as you enter the darkness. This river still holds the memory of light.

Sea Dreaming

2008-01-07T10:21:00.001-05:00

Just going to post a few stills from my video series up in the Grand Banks region. I am learning the video editing software ever so slowly...but just watching the above raw footage made me feel happy. Note to self-must push self to make seductive underwater footage in the Hudson in January

The Rainbow Trout Waltz

2008-01-06T11:00:00.000-05:00

Last night I did the Viennese Waltz and somewhere in the midst of a three count I thought of my childhood spent fishing. There is a link between the events I realized today after three paper cups of coffee. Somehow the music, the adventure, and the dance partner's conversation placed me back in the barefoot summers that seemed endless. I thought at first it was that genteel subtle Mississippi accent which my fellow dance student possessed that made me think of the adventures with my Father. Not to say that a southern accent has anything to do with me directly, or even my Father for that matter. It was a stereotyped perception based on fictitious accounts of a more aquatic southern existence where Huck and Tom would take on the world fearlessly fishing their way through life lessons.

I felt that I needed a bit of Huck's adventurous courage as we entered the museum ballroom where masses of beginners to pros twirled to recklessly fast tempo ed Waltz music. We had caught the last five minutes of instruction before being thrown into the final exam. We were at times clearly swimming upstream as a couple hundred others tried to navigate the space in a variety of styles that seemed to be a sort of montage of dance converged in one room. Whatever move they knew, they were bringing it to the waltz. Dips, double turns and quicksteps were pushed into our fire drill of a waltz. The tempo increased until it seemed that we were trying to evacuate rather than linger.

Many of us felt tricked into a night of ballroom dancing after venturing out ready for belly dance. Quite a switch the museum pulled on us. They had changed the theme and I was initially none to happy. Having immediately felt the need to apologize to my two girlfriends who had agreed to a night of exotic music and art viewing. This was my first unofficial NYC tour with guests that trusted that the the hour plus subway trip would deliver us at a wondrously inspired free night of the kind of dance where no one needs a partner. Now here we were at every ones worst nightmare- a group of waltzing paired strangers.

So what does this have to do with fishing, you are probably thinking right about now. How on earth could my mind become occupied with thoughts of fishing when I was in the midst of high elbowed spins that threatened a blackened eye for someone, possibly even me. I should be concentrating and self defensive, not drifting into childhood la la land. I spun and spun tilting a head back to admire the grand columns that surrounded us like soldiers. Ionic, Doric, Corinthian I pondered as my partner mentioned the appearance of a Lute. The Philharmonic were pulling out all of the stops, they were seemingly well aware that they faced angry mob of disappointed belly dancers and they were going to win us back with Medieval instruments. It seemed to be working. I found my dance partner had a gift for conversation in the same way my Dad once did. I also noted that as I divulged my awe with Northern planktonic seas, that my spins were getting sloppy, and potentially dangerous. By the time conversation drifted to socio-economic relations of the mid Pacific, I needed to be reigned in before my animated waltz injured someone.

The element of reckless abandon was certainly a part of my current flashback. It was my last dance partner of the evening who said it best as he planted his seventy something year old frame solidly so to body check the conga line of dancing teens. He smiled and said to me "and who thought that the waltz could not be vicious." Vicious indeed, I thought to myself as I realized that I was dancing with an elderly psychopath who had grace, style and the blocking moves worthy of the Toronto Maple Leafs. These teens were messing with an already dangerous dance and clearly both they and I had underestimated the elderly. One two three, one two three, one two three check. The waltz lost its innocence last night, but by siding with the ancient aggressor I emerged without a black eye. Others were possibly not so lucky.

Childhood summers hold a bit of that adrenaline pumping perceived danger that last night also brought. They are filled with roller coasters, water slides and frightening encounters with the elderly. Yup that is what summer vacation was to me. My Father himself was in his fifties when I was born, so all of the adventures with him were a bit like venturing with Grandpa. Many of these adventures took place at a local trout farm an hour from our own farm back in the Midwest.

We fished at a small privately owned farm that raised Rainbow trout. Now you could question the ethics of fishing at a farm, but the owner had already thought through this and limited the tools that were allowed. Bamboo pole, no reel and worms only. My Father who was perhaps the greatest sweet talker on the planet would make conversation with anyone and everyone. He was a great connector who could find a common thread that would link him in with every single person he met. As a child I believed that the world was his friend, and in some way that was true. My Dad was a master of baiting the hook with shared experience. Due to this, wonderful worlds opened to us. Often times it came in the form of offers to join picnics or special privileges granted. Going anywhere with my Dad was a backstage pass to the world.

The owner of the trout farm allowed us to use a secret weapon of sorts, chunks of cheddar cheese. Keep in mind this was taking place in Wisconsin, where in my six year old brain, any creature who loved cheese as much as I did was already a kindred spirit. This was our state food. Cheese was our identity. There were some ground rules that went with special privileges. There was of course the before mentioned equipment limitations, but the golden rule was that under no circumstances could "Charley" be caught and eaten. He was the golden boy of the pond. He was giant and old, but most of all he was a fabled fish who was even believed to posses special powers, or at least I tried to further that belief. In my mind I concluded that he might even be a talking wish granting sort of fish. No one really wanted to catch Charley, but every fisherman claimed they did. Even as a child I could see in their eyes that no one wanted nature to be tamed completely, even though this was a farm. We needed to have "Charlies" in the world. Something that was just beyond our reach. A magical creature that humbled us with its ability to captivate and its ability to evade.

With this being a farm, there was always work to be done. My special duties were to feed the baby fish in the far corners of the green. They were tiny splashes of life in swimming pool sized ponds. I took great pride in my chores. Other children would sneer as I got to cross under the "off limits" rope and saunter along on the dangerous side of the farm. This was the side with tall grasses and tree house type trees. These duties also held danger with warnings to "not fall in." The fish farmer and my Dad would cheerfully send me off on my duties like two reckless Grandfathers closing with the line, "Don't let Charley get ya!" They would laugh and tip a Pabst Blue Ribbon and I would be on my way thinking to myself, "boy if I could only be so lucky." I could potentially be kidnapped into his magic world of deep clear water swimming around in a miniature sea of rainbow sided creatures where I could live out my days in mermaid style.

In order to reach my feeding ponds I had to take a long walk around the great pond where we fished. That was Charley's pond. I would attempt a sort of child espionage, poking my head through cattails and reeds at the far end of the great pond to see if I could catch sight of him sunning himself at the surface, or possibly even having a conversation with a peer. I would sprinkle cheese chunks as gently as I could in hopes that Charley would think that there wasn't a human nearby, but rather that it was raining cheese. This technique I figured would make him go about his normal activities and allow me the opportunity to see him and possibly befriend him. I hoped that he could forgive me for the fish friends that I had consumed in my short life. I made sure that my hands were visible so that he would know immediately that I was unarmed. I kept the fish feed bucket near in hoping too that he would consider my baby fish feeding a sort of penance for my dining past and depending on the afternoon, potentially my future.

You can pretty much guess where this story is heading. One day, of course Charley reveals himself. But before we get to that there are a couple of things to know about him. He was rumored to be colossal, but no specifics were given past a few grand sweeping arm gestures. I would test this theory by placing ever greater sized cheese curds on the hook, and then slowly lowering them into the deep. I knew that these multi-ounce chunks would call out to The Great Charley, and sure enough there would be a ripple on the waters surface and your hook would be cleaned in record time. I also had no fear in actually mistakenly hooking him. I looked at it as a sort of paying reverence, making cheese curd offerings to this pond God. One for you, one for me as the cheese curd bag emptied between the great fish and his siren in training.

It was the last fishing trip of the season when Charley decided to thank me in his own way. I had decided to forgo my usual half bag of cheese so that he could have more. Winter would be coming and all the animals needed extra girth so to survive. Not that he needed anymore weight. I estimated him to be roughly the size of a smallish Loch Ness Monster. Lets just say that I was not disappointed that day when several minutes after emptying a double share of cheese onto his mouth, he lept in full glory with the sunlight reflecting metallic rainbows as he turned before splashing down again in a tremendous thud. My Pabst drinking babysitters panicked that it was me that fell into the pond. I heard my name called out, but I was unable to muster much of a response after witnessing the trout rising like a Phoenix out of the cheese curds.

The three of us stood on opposite sides of the pond as the concentric rings radiated from Charley's epicenter. We all knew who could make rings like that. I think that was the only day I ever saw my Dad drop his beer. I made my way back to meet up with the fish farmer and Dad. I was stumbling through the tall grasses yelling "Did ya see him, did ya see him!" No they hadn't in fact seen him, but unless I has capable of throwing a twenty-five pound shot into the middle of the pond, that had to be him. Charley had granted me my wish, even though we never got to have the conversation I so hoped for. He revealed himself only to me his muse, while strategically leaving undeniable evidence in the form of a giant wake that made my fish story the unquestionable truth in the history of the trout pond.

So that is the kind of story that swirls in my head as I Viennese Waltz my way through life. I think about how conversationalists open up worlds of adventure to me. How these dance partners were not unlike my father who considered whoever he encountered to be a friend in the works. This search for shared experience was what my father used to bait in a stranger to a place where their worlds would combine into long talks and laughter, snowmobile rides and even giant jumping fish. So while the Lute was played I was reminded of how lucky I am to have inherited this ability to talk to anyone about anything from my dad. It is my security blanket that I carry around the world with me. My final word to the Lute wielding Philharmonic is thank you for not being a belly dance band. I would not have had this experience unless I was able to three count my way through fascinating conversations with strangers.

Santaland Motive

2007-12-31T19:06:00.000-05:00

As much as I have been ranting playfully about my Santaland tryouts, there was a very important point that drove the entire mission. It was a simple idea that I hoped would be true. Having just navigated one of the worst years of my life, I decided to give every ounce of hope, compassion and joy to a group of strangers. Maybe by focusing wholeheartedly on bettering the human condition, I would also better my own condition. I needed to remind myself and all those around me that it was ok to dream. I needed to remind myself that even when I felt like I had nothing, I held the ultimate gift, the ability to inspire.

So I used that inspiration in every way possible. I encourged stressed Fathers to join their families, I sweet talked jaded school kids into being a better friend. I asked eight year old girls to cut themselves some slack and to be happy about what they look like rather than wishing desperately for blue eyes. More important than the inspired talks was the listening part. I managed to share enough of myself to allow people to let their own guard down and talk. So I listened and listened like the big man himself.

Today I poked my head in my favorite thrift store to continue my mission of outfitting myself for the city workforce. On the wall were three things of note. First a print of Mr Luther King Jr where he noted to live up to your calling no matter what that calling is. He referenced that if you are called to be a streetsweeper, be the best one you can be. Next to it was a needlepoint noting that sometimes in persuit of a dream, another dream takes flight. And lastly there was a linen angel that was stained and simply marked "as is." There was a poetry there for me to see.

I like to think that I gave it my all this holiday season. I dug deep and gave of myself, trusting the world even after a year of loss. I walked away with the ultimate gift, a co-worker turned friend. That was my gift from Santa, a friend that accepts you for who you are. Thanks Santa.

Santaland part 3

2007-12-29T14:06:00.000-05:00

So Jingle Jangle boy seemed to get us all threatened, including a miniature trio of Latininis who flaunted their lack of stature. "I am soooo ashamed to have to like write 4foot eight for height." Show off. I was monsterous compared to them. I felt like I was back on the public bus in Padangsedimpuan, Indonesia with a chicken on my lap. Rolling around on a pile of coconuts because I was deemed "Basar." Which I believe transates to 'grace of an elephant.' I wanted to be svelt and elfinlike but not around these three whose giagantic earrings made them appear even smaller. They pushed their way to the front of the Santaland line up stating loudly and repeatidly, "I can't see. I can't see anything." Yeah we got it the first time.

A drill sargent of a manager yelled at us, "who believes in Santa!" She scared the heck out of me but I managed a hand up. She obviously didn't see it or maybe just wanted to show the torture she could let loose on a non believer. I noted that I did in fact raise my hand, so she retorted by making fun of how I raised my hand. Wasn't merry enough, I guess. Should have poked out my neighbor's eye in the name of Claus. I gave thought to jumping at her feet and yelling "I believe! I believe! Amen!" But then I pictured her tying me to the creepy talking tree and leaving me there for the season as Jingle Jangle and the three amigas threw candy canes at my head. Better let her have this one.

I skated through the tag team interview, speaking as loudly as I could. I was judged elfin enough and put into a top secret survey room. Jingle Jangles was nowhere to be seen. Did he get lost in the maze? I mean it is a one way system, but his earlier panic had me concerned that he might have accidently got his head stuck in a dry cleaning bag or something.

to be continued...

Santaland Part 2

2007-12-25T13:10:00.000-05:00

Upon my arrival in NYC a rather sporadic job website search showed Santaland mixed in with other more normal positions at Macy’s. It was short term; seasonal work that called for holiday spirit and wait, that is where David Sedaris worked! Bingo. No other job would suffice. This casual search resulted in a passionate chase to become the next member of the village. I dialed the Santaland Hotline not knowing what to expect. I returned later that day to find a message on my answering machine that sounded as if Santa himself had called. I played and replayed the message certain that this is the voice of Santa. What I did expect? Well, I am not sure but the quality of the voices that lulled you on the messages were enough to make you dream of sugarplums.

What I did not know is that while I left messages on the voicemail all was cutting loose behind the scenes in Santaland. They were just hiring the last positions in the next couple of days. Several hundred had already been deemed not elfin enough. As I rather absently redialed so to listen to the message again in a faint hope that someone would pick up. I did get through to an animated chap who continued to weed out the ranks by asking me a few questions over the phone. I felt as though he picked up the phone by accident, kind of like a reflex reaction that he may have been regretting. He paused momentarily before deciding to plow ahead with the interview.

I tried my best to show my unique humor without sounding overly aggressive or creepy. I could only imagine what they had already heard from other prospects. I made the effort to show my character and sell myself as a cheerful team player who is adept at handling holiday stress and able to babble in many world languages. Sold. Come in for the group interview. He noted to follow the crowds to Human Resources. Crowds? Boy, nothing intimidating about being herded into HR with hundreds maybe thousands of potentially shorter, merrier contenders. I looked for the flattest shoes I owned. I was told to dress Business like. Hmm, what would a career savvy elf dress like? Green and red seemed too obvious, black too stark. So I threw on a pink knit sweater that made me look blushed and huggable to children. Done, now how to elfin-ify my resume?

I tried to downplay all of the solo artist stuff that could look like too much of maverick in what I naively believed to be an otherwise egoless environment. Santa was the show elves were the sideshow and I needed to make my resume look like I was a teammate not a soloist. I squashed out as much as I could and highlighted my costumed parade appearances and teaching experience both of which showed that I was used to humiliating myself. I saved it under “Elfin Resume” and put it on the jump drive. When the Staples employee pulled up the file I caught her rolling her eyes as she read the file name. Jealous, I thought to myself. If I get the job I may even report her to the big man like an elfin snitch.

I did follow the crowds to the Human resource department where I faced off with the competition. One gangly curly haired boy with a striped scarf was a shoe in I feared. He looked like a Claymation figure come to life straight out of Rudolph’s Shining New Year. Was it Jingles or Jangles I pondered as the voice on my answering machine boomed in front of me? Oh my, it’s him. I meekly responded and felt like the lion before the wizard as his voice rang out again asking me to speak louder. I have never been known for a loud voice, except for screaming on roller coasters. This was my weakness and Santa had already zoned in on it. No hiding anything in this HR department considering we are under scrutiny by a boss with special powers.

The Jingle Jangle boy was now spinning out of control even though the voice of Santa had already acknowledged that he was perfect. Fortunately for me the Claymation model was unable to fill out an application. Panicked and now calling home for assistance. Ha! Amateur. He was in turmoil like the Toll House elves when the cookies go flying all over the place and they are left covered in chocolate. We were funnelled into the next room of chaos where giant ornaments swung dangerously above our heads. I thought they were going to have us compete in a sort of Survivor Santaland where we pushed each other over in the maze as giant ornaments crashed down and we slipped on fake snow as we rushed to get to Santa's lap. But the following game was just as scarry as we were grilled about our alliances to the tribe of Santa...

…to be continued