1. Anne Lee Long, known professionally as Anna Banana, was a Canadian artist known for her mail art, performance art, writing, and work as a small press publisher.
23 Facts About Anna Banana
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Anna Banana has been described as an "entrepreneur and critic" who helped pioneer the artistamp, a postage-stamp-sized medium.
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Anna Banana was prominent in the mail art network since the early 1970s, acting as a bridge between the movement's early history and its second generation.
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Anna Banana died on November 29,2024, at the age of 84.
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Anna Banana attended the University of British Columbia from 1958 to 1963, graduating with an elementary academic teaching certificate.
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Anna Banana taught for five years: two in public schools and three in Vancouver's New School.
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Anna Banana began her career in Victoria as a fabric artist, where dissatisfaction with the marketing of her work led toward more-public expressions.
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Anna Banana sent a copy to Vancouver artist Gary Lee Nova, who replied with an image-bank request list providing names, addresses and image requests of contemporary mail artists.
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In 1973 Anna Banana moved to San Francisco to join mail-art friends known as the Bay Area Dadaists, who produced Neo-Dadaist performances, mail art and publications.
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Anna Banana worked as a typesetter at a print shop, where the first issue of her magazine Vile magazine was printed in 1974.
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That year Anna Banana organized a "Anna Banana Art" event for the Global Television Network, held at Bridges Restaurant on Granville Island, Vancouver.
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From 1983 to 1985, Anna Banana worked in the production department of Intermedia Press, where she learned full-color printing.
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The works were financed cooperatively, with participating artists receiving 500 copies of their stamp and Anna Banana Productions retaining the remainder for sales and promotion.
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In 1990, Anna Banana created the Artistamp Collector's Album, a cloth bound limited edition of forty-nine silk-screened ring binders to house the IAP and the Artistamp News .
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Anna Banana then returned to general mail-art topics in the Anna Banana Rag; edition 41 was published in September 2011.
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In 1991, Banana created a miniature book and stamp sheet, 20 Years of Fooling Around with A Banana, as the catalog for her twenty-year retrospective at the grunt gallery in Vancouver.
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Anna Banana has received a number of grants from the Canada Council between 1975 and 2009.
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In 1974, Anna Banana accepted a job at the San Francisco Bay Guardian pasting up advertising pages.
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Anna Banana filled the one-inch-by-one-column ad holes with invitations to her events; the first entry was for the 1974 Columbus Day Parade, offering "degrees of Bananology" to those who participated or sent banana news.
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In 1980, Anna Banana was invited by art curator Rosa Ho to present the Anna Banana Olympics at the Surrey, British Columbia Art Gallery.
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In 1983, Anna Banana organized a mail-art show for the Arts, Sciences and Technology Center in Vancouver, producing a catalog for the 246 artists who participated.
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In 1998, Anna Banana curated "Artistamps", an exhibit from the International Mail-Art Network of her collection of mail art, for the Sechelt Art Center in Sechelt, British Columbia.
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Some of Anna Banana's work has been part of larger exhibitions:.