Threshold of a new journey

"We seek not simply to replicate the journey
but also to create the context in which something
unexpected will happen....Why seek them? Perhaps
not to have stories to tell, but also to make sense
of the stories we already know."

-Andrea Barret

It is time for me to regain a sense of myself. I am preparing to leave Switzerland and the days seem short and inefficient. Seemingly a mess of emotions from fear to excitement of the prospect of being able to focus on the joys of the world after so much distraction. It is so hard to decide what to take. I just want to board the plane and look at the tops of clouds. Drink little cups of coffee and chat with strangers about the potential this flight brings. I await writing in a steno book, stretching canvas, making rock collections and looking for starfish. Reading all night because the book is too perfect, too timely to set down.

My time in Switzerland was strangely disastrous, as if I had to make all of the wrong decisions before I could see right. Many things that I found beautiful here were taken away and I have to see the pattern. The trees that I sketched were taken down, as was the small ivy and stone building that enchanted my street. It was the simple beauty that I sought here, but grew fearful of seeing it lest it be destroyed. It cannot be that I was the only one to see these moments.

So I look ahead trying not to think too much of that which was left behind. I start anew and look within for courage.

Hatchling

I wandered back to my island in the river. Found that it was trashed by partiers. Bottles by the bird nests. The water hen's were fighting over a nest lined with potato chip bags, another built a floating nest on a thick piece of Styrofoam. I picked the place up, and realized how happy they were with their garbage discoveries, sticks poked into Styrofoam, flashing aluminum foil in the light.

Spirit House article

Ok, so patience does have its rewards. The Honolulu Star Bulletin decided to run the article about my giant lace house/dress in the juicy Sunday paper. They will also be including it in the online edition Star Bulletin
As always I am a nervous wreck as the results of my previous interviews have varied wildly. This time random comments were collected from the community (still uncertain if that was a good idea.)

If you check today's paper you can see the article about the Dalai Lama's visit to Maui

Pond study

Pond scum

When I tell people I am living in Switzerland, they don't picture me up to my armpits in pond scum. I hate to break it to them, but the same was the case in Hawaii. There is something special about these detached bits of stagnation. The life in them is truly amazing. Pond scum has become like the character in these videos. I view the world through the shifting masses of color and texture. Apple blossoms fall upon the surface and a dragonfly zip overhead. I always have been interested in viewing the world through another perspective;it is what draws me to travel. The funny thing is that I will know only one pond, cove, cave or alley intimately in each place I go. I spent two years in Hawaii returning to one cove where a sandbar appeared nearly every day to isolate it from the greater sea. When the floods came I was there. I never tired of it. It was my stage.

History viewed through water

I have spent most of this exceptionally mild winter putting a concentrated effort to filming underwater. I have learned that there is always more patience to be acquired. I began this project in Hawaii, and continued it in the fresh water here in Switzerland. I am drawn to the distortion of water and the change of perspective. They become dreamlike, as memory itself. I have no idea what is to become of these videos, but I fell they are important to my work, even though they are in the developing stage.

In Hawaii I built underwater installations in a calm bay, but the subject was not calm. My investigations into the nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll. I began building underwater events that were filmed in segments. Based around the declassified joint Army/Navy accounts where the men were ordered to throw their radioactive decontamination gloves into the sea, but it was they that were radioactive. I began with one line out of a military account and have continued on from there.

What a departure you may think, but it all ties in to the history of a place. Much of my work is rooted in location and the fingerprint of history on that place, but I am also working like a librarian, sorting history so that we may again find it and re-examine it. It is the history of my family as well. I come from a family of vetrans who were silenced by war. I speak the words they were not allowed. I began this project when my last Uncle died in silence.

In Switzerland I first became interested in the swans due to their historic significance tied to the German Military. I continue to face history in my work and look forward to the day when I can piece the elements together into an installation.

Necessary changes

I am preparing to move throughout the world once again. It is necessary for me to gain perspective on the changes I must make and to truly face myself. That has always been my way to work things through. Take away the familiar and all that remains is yourself. It is very hard to overlook problems when you strip all else away. I began sorting my things and came across my journals. How far I have moved away from them. They were like those rocks in the earlier post, constant and strong. I decided today to post a travel journal entry from a few years ago.

August 12, 1999
Isle of the birds
Cook Islands

I stand against the clean white counter. Three flames burn, two candles and one beneath the kettle. The power blew again, my secret wish granted. Voices coming from the darkness. Crickets. My painting earned itself a candle. A vigil. The whole house is mine for just one night. Then they will come alone or in pairs, together or separate. Filling these six rooms with strange voices. Asking the same questions in different ways. Pulling me out of the cavern and into the light. The generator kicks in returning life to how it was. I reach for the light switch, turning them back off.

My art scares kids

(photo courtesy of JMKAC, Laced with History exhibition)


I just had this wonderful photo sent to me from Jo at JMKAC. I am not sure if I am excited or concerned that my work is a part of their education.

Can you find the future art critic?

Spirit House Update

(Spirit House, Anna Peach, view from interior)

Just an update those who had some questions for me about Spirit House. If you are in Hawaii, the Honolulu Star Bulletin is running a feature about it. It was scheduled to run today, but was postponed due to the sad and urgent news of the week. They will let me know the new run date...and I will post it.

Swimming in April

(Stories in the Trees, Anna Peach, history books, thread, Banyan tree roots)

Today, I wanted to swim outdoors. It being April, and my being in Switzerland did very little to deter me. I am one of those people who has an uncontrollable urge to get into any pool of water. I have had this feeling for years even though I nearly drowned at very bad swim lessons at age 8. I have been known to step into public fountains, and swim at night in phosphorescent plankton filled seas. I guess it is my way of feeling free. So with today's balmy air temperature, I set out on a mission to swim in the river. A swim in leg numbing glacial waters seemed just the thing to jolt me into feeling alive. The water smelled wonderfully of moss after a spring rain, a mother duck cruised by with ten offspring, and most of all I felt really grateful to climb back onto that island. Sometimes we get so caught in living by a certian set of rules that we forget what it is that makes us feel free. What is is to feel like ourselves...no matter how unconventional that may be.

Moeraki

(Moeraki series-ongoing,Anna Peach,acrylic, maps,history books on canvas)

I could not sleep last night. Wandered and stared out the windows. Maybe it is shock...maybe reality has just set in. I posted my favorite rock painting, they never made the website, but insted each one went to different part of the world. Very different people own them now, but they share these three rocks. I just keep painting the same painting, but they never look the same. Always three stones. I think it is like my Kyoto book that I made, sitting alone in the temple garden. Drawing lanterns, never alone for long. Thirty views of the temple garden it was called. I drew with a calligraphy marker until it was dry. I thought I was dying...right before doctors tried to tell me that was. When they said it, I convinced myself that I was going to live. Ended up being the medicine that was killing me... they blamed Sumatra...I never did. I always return to that kind of garden, natural or invented. Stones that lean on each other for support. All over the world there are stones like that. Melting into each other with time.

Camouflage

(First view of the Camouflage project I mentioned in the previous post)

Yesterday, I got lost dreaming up a great multi national project with this piece. I thought about traveling from Switzerland back to Hawaii and working on this on route. I wondered what it would be like to train and ferry myself across Europe with the ever growing "insecurity blanket." Then cross America in the same way. I could picture myself showing up at art festivals and not so expected places. It could be a canopy when it is hot, and a blanket when it is cold. I was always impressed by the work of Kim Soo-Ja. Solitary, poetic, silent meditations on sewing, and infinately more. Maybe this is my time for the circus to really come to town.

Acts of Labor as Performance

Spirit House, Anna Peach, 2003-2005, 600 found doilies

It is always a bit of a risk to ask a community for quotes about your artwork, especially if that community feels as though you abandoned them. That is how I have spent my morning trying to figure out who the newspaper should contact. They cornered the curator, but now I am facing the ultimate test, someone not connected to the art community. It puts you in a strange situation, having a third party asking them to speak about you, and then knowing that whatever they say goes to print without you clearing it first. I guess it is about control, or the lack of it. My storefront project was a little like the circus coming to town, but not everyone likes circuses, and not everyone is happy when they leave. Many of the people were a little angry thinking I abandoned them to go seek fortune in big glamorous Switzerland. Fact is that I am living in an even smaller community, and Switzerland is another island minus the ring of water. The biggest difference is that I babble in German unable to communicate effectively. Or shall I say I babble in German worse than I babble in English.

Control is the issue that comes up time and time again for me. Much of my work involves acts of performance that are obsessive, using hour upon hour of labor. Maybe in those many days that grew into years the work actually did become a part of the community. I like to think it did. Although I was in many ways able to control the making of the piece, I was completely unable to control the interactions that at times were confrontational on their part, nor could I control the publicity that followed. For as many days that I spent moping about being mistreated by tipsy tourists, or made fun of by the Hawaiian shrit wearing land developer, I have to say I miss it, and I only wish I would have made the video of the harrassment.

I have been looking at an office room in a converted barn in the village where I now reside. They painted the old stone building mustard yellow for some reason. I wonder about another "storefront" project. This time I could or would not communicate. The other part of me enjoys the ability to be mobile, to take my performace labors into the world. I have started working again on a piece of camo that is altered through my handtying pieces of earthtoned Hawaiian shirts. I think of it as my blanket of insecurity. Monday, I pulled it across my garden table and watched the holiday hikers come to a halt. I was reminded of how light and portible the piece is, and how it could travel on my back, on trains like the Swiss Military. There is something really disturbing about making homemade camouflage, and the act of cutting shirts and hand tying them only adds to it. Maybe that is my summer project, more random and mobile. A summer of fun and fines, I presume.

Thirty Perspectives on...

Thirty Perspectives on the Environment

Anna Peach, 2005, photograph of Hawaiian Ohia tree viewed through device, eyeglass lenses

I received an interesting request from the Hawaiian Conservation Convention about the possibility of my making an exhibit for their July conference in Honolulu. I was somehow nominated by some brave soul who decided to stand up on my behalf. That in itself was impressive as the norm for Hawaii is Audubon style watercolors of extinct birds. Who knows maybe it was my before mentioned allies in the USDA. The only two catches I see is the fact that I am

a) in Switzerland

b) they want only 2-D work.

I will submit something none the less, and hopefully another member of the subcommittee will see that you can take a more contemporary approach to environmental art.

Revisiting Chicago

(Moon Jellyfish, Anna Peach, stills from video filmed at Shedd Aquarium Chicago, 1/ 2007)

I found myself spending day after day in museums on my last visit to Chicago. I had left myself a week to explore after I completed the installation in Sheboygan. I was so nervous about that installation due to the 20ft ceilings, but all ended up fine. Different than I had envisioned but fine. The Spirit house took on an octopus or squid like shape, due to it being in a group show and not being able to stretch lines out in all directions. So squid like it was. I have always had an interest in the “freaks of the sea” as I began calling them affectionately. I think it was part inspired by my first time snorkeling on Weh Island, off the Northern coast of Banda Ache, Sumatra. That first time looking under water brought me face to face with an octopus, a large cuttlefish, and a school of lionfish within five minutes. The later brought up memories of a scull and crossbones warning on the tank of the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, both a fortunate and timely recognition. It also began an ongoing preoccupation of mine. Simply put, I am interested in how we experience nature. How is it filtered, censored and recombined so that people can again relate to it.



In Chicago, I took an afternoon to revisit the Shedd, after milling about SAIC for an hour or two. I brought my video camera and simply filmed the lot. From the chaos of the diver feeding fish in the big tank, with air hose caught on the turtles fin, to the serene but otherwise ignored Moon Jellies that top my post. I thought about why a man sloshing around gasping for breath while conversing with the man on the p.a. system was drawing such a crowd…and why for only for a few minutes before turning attention elsewhere. I stayed for the whole event, and by doing so I got to see him hand feed sand colored rays the size of salad plates, that no one else seemed to care about. I thought about our diminishing attention span and the need to see it all.



I sat alone in a darkened space with the moon jellies. I sat there for an uncomfortable length of time. So long that staff members began to check on me to make sure I wasn’t up to something, like say learning or reflecting on something. It seems like more and more if you stop too long you are a vandal.

I went on to see the Field museum and stayed there an equally long time. I stood in the Big Island lava flow section to see if it would elicit some feeling of connection for me, and it did due to the blaring video of a familiar news reporter in a vintage broadcast of the 1980’s eruption. I went on to sit by a Spirit House, a long house, alone on an atoll, and later looked at the stuffed birds that I recognized from the paces I have stayed around the world. I had fed their relatives papaya near Timor and laid in hot sand to watch their babies hatch in the Cook Islands. It was all so strange to be here together again in such different circumstances, considering they were stuffed. It was all so structured, in a way that life in these places never is. It made me feel fortunate to have had these places play a role in my experience in this world. Even though it was such an alteration of my experiences, it was enough to make me want to stay. I wanted to tell someone that that bird sat on my shoulder, that it made me feel alive and not so threatening on their tiny atoll called Takutea, but then thought better of it. I left the museum grudgingly where I walked in the cold evening air all the way to Michigan Avenue, and stopped to watch the Canadian geese sleeping in Grant Park. As I walked I tried to think of someway to tell these things without having to say a word at all.

Searching for the Pagoda

I have spent a good part of this past week a little lost in memory, childhood memories of a visit to Honolulu. I remember three main things about that early trip, being swept along Waikiki in a current, hundreds of koi at the Pagoda, and crying for both sides at the USS Arizona Memorial. Years later I spent many trans pacific stopovers seaching Oahu phone books and flyers for a floating restaurant. I ended up rediscovering the Pagoda when I first exhibited in Honolulu. I found myself standing at the same spot I had stood 23 years earlier. It is a funny feeling to sweep over you. As soon as you stop looking for it, you find it. The Pagoda is a place caught in time. Somewhere in the late sixties to mid seventies. A comfortable, humble constant in a world of rapid change. I enjoyed my breakfast talks with Beverly and dinner chats with Roland who collectively had logged in 52 years working the tables there. They told me about the changes, while I saw the similarities. I did the math and calculated that Beverly was working there when I made my first trip. She spoke of the loss of so many koi, an illness that struck many years back. She sees loss while I see life. Hundreds of lives swirling in color fields of orange, red, white and black. Maybe I needed to remember the life, especially since this trip was to get some distance from the family deaths that seemed to never end. My child brain needed to see a flury of life on a bus tour between Punchbowl and Pearl Harbor, we all needed to see some life that day. Perhaps it is those sharp contrasts that make Honolulu so memorable.