Home  >  Artists  >  Anna Homler

Anna Homler

“The inspiration for my work comes from the realm of myths and dreams. I like to combine ordinary objects in unexpected ways so that their symbolic nature is revealed and new levels of meaning unfold. Many of my pieces are miniature stage sets where the commonplace and the extraordinary exist simultaneously, creating a landscape the imagination of the viewer is invited to inhabit.”

BIOGRAPHY
Encompassing music, spoken word, and installation, intermedia artist ANNA HOMLER’s alternative languages extend the possibilities of meaning and communication. With a sensibility that is both ancient and post-modern, HOMLER makes words musical and music like words. Since 1982, she has collaborated in America with composers/musicians Steve Moshier, Davis Moss, Ethan James and Jorge Martin, and in Europe with the Voices of Kwahn, Steve Beresford, Peter Kowald, Richard Sanderson, Geert Waegeman, and Sylvia Hallett.

HOMLER has performed at well-known venues throughout the United States and Europe, including appearances at P.S. 122, the Kitchen, Dixon Place, and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (L.A.C.E.); Supraclub in Prague; Klarinsky in Bratislava, Slovakia; Ketty Do in Bologna, Italy; the Stadgarten and the Loft in Koln, Germany; and the Melkweg and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. She has participated in such international festivals as Sonic Disturbance at the Cleveland Public Theare; New Music America in Montreal; the Tegentonen Festival at the Paradiso in Amsterdam; Milanopoesia in Milan; Primavera Jazz Festival in Sardinia;The International Treffen Innovatier Musikerinnen in Aachen; Het Vertel Festival in Ghent, Belgium; Voices Festival in Innsbruck, Austria; Spoken Word Festival in Brussels, Belgium; Dissidenten Festival in Rotterdam Holland; The Moers Festival in Moers, Germany; The Festival International des Musiques Actuelle in Nancy France; Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville, Quebec; Musik Triennale Koeln, Koeln, Germany; and the LMC Festival, the Purcell Room, South Bank, London.

Highlighting HOMLER’s work is the performance/installation project PHARMACIA POETICA, which examines the symbolic and tonal qualities of words and objects. Having traveled nationwide as part of the exhibition 40 Years of California Assemblage, the installation has also been shown at Gracie Mansion in New York; the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe and Nonsequitur Music Gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Gallery 400 in Chicago Illinois; the Melkfabriek in Den Bosch, Holland; and at Gallery Oko in Amsterdam. From 1994 to 1995 the PHARMACIA POETICA was part of the traveling exhibition Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object, a survey of performance art in the U.S. from 1950 to the present. It was also exhibited at Karbon in Zurich, Switzerland; as part of the Santa Monica Festival, Santa Monica, California; and most recently at Gerlesborgsskolan, Gerlesborg Sweden.

HOMLER‘s music first became known in the 1980′s with her Breadwoman cassette (High Performance Audio), a collaboration with Steve Moshier. Her debut CD, Do Ya Sa di Do (amf), was released in 1992. In 1994 she was featured on sugarconnection: alien cake (No Man’s Land) and in 1995 on Macaronic Sines (Lowlands), a collaboration with Geert Waegeman and Pavel Fajt. In the mid-1990′s, she released two CD’s with the Voices of Kwahn in the U.K.: Silver Bowl Transmission (North/South) and peninsular enclosure (Swarf Finger). In 1997 a recording of her live performance with Waegeman and Fajt was released as Corne de Vache (Victo). House of Hands (ND) was released in 2000. Her most recent cds are Kelpland Serenades (pmMENTUM) with Steuart Liebig and Piewacket (PNT), with Stephanie Payne.

PHARMACIA POETICA
Pharmacia Poetica is an on-going installation that explores the transformative power of sound and images. The purpose of the Pharmacia Poetica is to demonstrate how the literal becomes the lyrical and in so doing, cures. Like any apothecary, the Pharmacia Poetica offers a mixture of remedies. These include sound, poetry, metalanguage, images, and objects, the main feature of which is a collection of glass bottles in which the hidden beauty of commonplace objects, suspended in liquid, is revealed.

Inspired by the writing of Paracelsus and Marsilio Ficino, the Pharmacia first appeared in 1987 as an exhibition in a storefront gallery in Hollywood and as a radio play on KPFK in Los Angeles. Since then the Pharmacia Poetica has travelled throughout the United States and Europe, often in collaboration with other visual artists and writers. Among the places where it has appeared are the following:

Radio play on KPFK’s “Soundings”with composer Steve Moshier.
Rebel Art Gallery, Hollywood, California.
Sonrisa, Los Angeles, California.
Albright College Campus Center, Albright College, Reading, Pennsylvania.
Williams Lamb Gallery, Long Beach, California.
New Arts Program, Kutztown, Pennsylvania.
40 Years of California Assemblage, Wight Gallery, Univeristy of California, Los Angeles.
Window Installation collaboration with John O’Brian, Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, California.
“The Fifth Essence”, group show, Gracie Mansion, New York, New York.
Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Melkfabriek, Den Bosch, Holland.
Gallerie Oko collaboration with Milos Vojechovsky, Amsterdam, Holland.
Free Clinic Benefit Auction, Los Angeles, California.
Window Installation, Stephen Johnson PCA, Venice, California.
Het Vertel Festival, Gent, Belgium.
“Influx”, group show, Gallery 400, University of Illinois, Chicago.
“Drei”, group show, Kulturzentrum Altes Rathaus, Wuerselen, Germany.
Colllabroation with Monique Darge, Logos Foundation, Gent, Belgium.
Karbon, Zuerich, Switzerland.
Performance/Slideshow collaboration with Allessandra Beradi, Al Centro D’Arte Masaorita, Bologna, Italy.
Outside the Frame: Performance Art & the Object, 50 Year Survey of Performance Art in the US, –Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio.
Outside the Frame: Performance Art & the Object, Newhouse Center of Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor, Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York.
Nonsequitur Music Gallery with Steve Roden, Alburquerque, New Mexico.
Out Auction, Directors Guild, Los Angeles, California.
“Ear as Eye”, group show, L.A.C.E., Los Angeles, California.
“L.A. Slide,” group show, The Living Room, Santa Monica, California.
“118W/24N”, group show, Kulturzentrum bei den Minoriten, Graz, Austria.
Dirt, Hollywood, California.
L.A. Poetry Festival, Los Angeles , California.
Gerlessborgsskolan, Gerlessborg, Sweden