Anna's Studio, My Visual Diary

I started a second blog to place images and words for my new projects. This image is from a new series of images made in between places. I made a link to my visual diary under the links to my art section.

Spirit House Returns

The above piece, Spirit House will be arriving back to me in two days. I cannot wait to see it again...before finding another place for her to visit

Fertility Suits

Website was taken down

My website will be restructured to reflect current bodies of work from Hawaii, Switzerland, Newfoundland and New York.

I will be shifting some of my images to my blog in the meantime while a new website is built.

shyness prevails

My job search has proven successful for my very first temporary creative job in the city. I have been a ball of nerves since after I decided to research my job opportunity only to find that 1000 people on average apply for this job every year in NYC. I realized that my interview was just as much of a tryout or audition. Lets just say that there is a reason that I have chosen the field of visual art over performing arts. I soon was reminded of that when I found myself in Human Resources, midtown Manhattan elbow deep in actors, with me blushing, trembling, and somehow smiling continuously. Well, today I got the unexpected call on a Sunday morning. I made the cut, and I will sleep well tonight. How this happened I will never know...but this proves that there is hope for all of the blushing people of the world.

city tree

The tree outside my window

Oh its always a battle isn't it, city or country. Any one who travels like I do knows this inner battle that rears its head at the most unexpected times. I am so near the sea, yet I don't feel its call. It seems grey green and emotionally distant. I was inspired today to get off my self pity and find my own place at the shore. Once again repair my underwater video camera and make a bond with the sea here. Now who would have guessed that I would have found the most beautiful colors in six inches of water in the violent sea around Newfoundland. So who knows what I will discover here? In order to find it you need to look...and in order to look you need to make an effort.

I wake and fall asleep to this fluffy tree. Birds sing there and it makes me feel as if I am living in a tree house. It has wonderful coverage right now. It is my daily nature reminder that I cannot possibly escape. It is a time of change for us all. Maybe we should look to the seasons and adapt, prepare and even celebrate with these changes around us. I mean I am facing the same sea as I was in Newfoundland...it just a little warmer and a little further south. I love the sea in part for being a border less place...maybe I need to remove a few of my own borders too.

Meeting the full moon

Lights on the top of the Empire State building, with full moon at left

Images taken my first night out in NYC. City viewed from below, on the surface of the water, and from above. Statue of Liberty seen with reflection of immigrants.

Travel light

Flying away from Newfoundland, Canada

How do you make 37 NYPD smile?

So imagine me in my tree grazing costume, sandwiched between a hula troupe and a float of drag queens…it seemed only fitting that I would be in that mix. In the parade of life I would say I would probably be in the same exact spot. To summarize I would say that it is a Pride parade with the Grim Reaper…and so much more. I never really felt the mind numbing flash of the media until last night. My favorite comment was from a man who was thrilled that I decided to put the giraffe in a sweater. The combination seemed to thrill him to tears. You just never know what is going to happen. It was definitely a free for all at times with people pushing, grabbing and generally anxious prior to being let loose in measured doses into 6th street in New York. I was particularly impressed by the NYPD, for they sort of became my parade. I spent a fair amount of time trying to avoid falling into an officer, and spent an equal amount of time trying to make a few of them smile. Neither was easy, mind you as I was in a very chaotic section of the parade, as I later learned. It seems that there were sections that were exciting but not necessarily chaos. I was under the impression that the entire parade was careening out of control, but nope only a few sections including mine. But chaos seems to be my destiny, so onward I went, out of the main drag and tried to zigzag back and forth to the people. I mean people! Thousands and thousands everywhere you looked. People were at times twenty people deep, trying to catch a glance. I lumbered and even danced to the circuit boy club music, performed a modified hula, and was the official pet of the “massage parlor” girls. It was my own coming of age story with all of the characters marching along, but in an Anthony Hopkins direction style ie. Slipstream.

It was something memorable and definitely something to talk about next time I am around a campfire with a few tourists in the South Seas. I am glad I had the motivation to due it. It is amazing too, that you end up running into some of the same people that you saw earlier in the day. The Ghost Buster boys who I had spent the morning with on the Today Show, spotting me in the chaos, thanks to my height. Another woman recognized me from my parade of one down 5th ave, after Rockefeller Plaza. She grabbed my sleeve excitedly as if we were old friends. Costumes and parades are great like that, they seem to lessen the gap between us.

All in all, my very favorite moment of the day was spent trailing two zoo keepers strolling on their lunch break outside the Central Park Zoo. An elderly pedestrian approached us and informed them that they were being followed by a giraffe. Needless to say they laughed and gave that "everybody is a clown" look before turning to see that is was true. "Only in New York" I heard throughout the day and night, and it seems to be quite true.