Anna Simson in conversation with Cecilia Nuin

Cecilia Nuín: When was the first time you did any kind of art?

Anna Simson: I was doing art from the earliest time I can remember because my father was a psychologist. He did a dissertation on children’s art, and he loved the idea that I would always make art. So, I have drawing material from that time, and he collected it. I had boxes of one line drawing, two line drawings. He saved everything.

CN: And classified them.

AS: Exactly, like a scientist. Everything had a title and a date on the back. I am talking hundreds of these.

CN: What was his name?

AS: Edward Simson. He loved art, and he was a photographer. He saw painting as the pinnacle of what you can achieve. I think, he wanted to be a painter, and he instilled that in me. I just loved drawing, and I thought it was fun. I remember having watercolors when I was very young, and I had a big pad of a beautiful paper.

CN: At what age?

AS: I was five or six. It was 16”x 20”, and I filled out the pad with all these swooshy, great watercolors. I had a joy of filling this whole thing with color and feeling the best experience ever. I loved painting, and he encouraged it completely. He wanted me when I got older to have my own art studio. He was going to build it in the backyard with a skylight, and I would put my art on the walls, and I would have my little desk that I would work at. He totally envisioned I was going to do this. And, I would go: that’s great, that sounds really fun! Another thing is, I like to organize. My childhood was chaotic. I think is fairly normal for kids with chaotic upbringing to try to reorganize their lives to make sense of it. I loved decorating, and creating order out of chaos. A lot of times, for dinner, he would make a big salad. After washing the lettuce, and cutting the carrots, I would pick flowers, not necessarily edible, to decorate the salad. So, when presented it was beautiful. And the cucumber, and carrot slices were a perfect layout. The flowers decorated the top of it. It was almost like a cake.

CN: Where did you lived?

AS: My parents split when I was three. Mom lived in Salinas with my grandparents, but I was mostly with my father in Monterey. My mom taught bilingual education.

CN: So, she was a teacher.

AS: My father got sick, and from the time I was nine to eleven I don’t have a have a clear memory of what happened. I lived in Salinas, and when he got better, and I lived in Monterey. Then, he passed away when I turned eleven. So, mom moved in with me.

CN: So, you always lived in the same house?

AS: Pretty much. I spent time in Hawaii. As he got ill, he wanted to spend more time there. It’s warm, and was good for his health. I would always go with him. We had family friends that we visited. I came back speaking pidgin English, and I fit in because I would tan. I would come back looking a little bit more Hawaiian. I felt I would fit in wherever I was, because being half and half you become empathetic to people who are not necessarily of the same culture -- who are displaced. You have an understanding of having two places and separate worlds. My father was white with blonde hair and blue eyes. My mother is Mexican, and my father was Estonian, and they had nothing in common.

CN: So, did you have a formal art education?

AS: I had art activities in elementary school, like making candles, and dolls. My grandmother is a seamstress, and she made her own clothes. She was unbelievably beautiful when she was young. She still has a sense that if she goes out, she says, “I have to have a certain dress on.” She dropped out in first grade to help her family, but she can make anything. She is not literate, yet everything is oral in her home. She was always making things with her hands -- food, and clothes. That is something I felt drawn to as well. I was usually into her scissors, buttons, and fabrics. She is 81, and she still makes her own clothes. When I go to her house, I see that it looks like my house. The stacks of fabric are up to the ceiling, the stacks of buttons, and the sewing machine.

CN: So, what happened after that?

AS: I took a couple of art classes in high school like drawing and ceramics. I did not see myself as an artist so much, I saw myself as a writer. I graduated a year early, and at seventeen I was able to go to UC Berkeley because they have scholarships for kids who could not afford school which is fantastic! I was there for five years, and I took a figure drawing class at night from the UC extension program. Once a week, I would come home after drawing for three hours with a natural high. It was the first time I was able to create my own sense of happiness. I found that I could do that through drawing. I had influential teachers who tried to give me confidence. In some ways, I had a teacher who gave me more confidence that I knew what to do with. I got my degree, but after school I did not know where to go. I was not an art star, and I did not make cool art. I felt hang up on what the subject of my art was.

CN: So, you finished then...

AS: Yes, I graduated with a Bachelor in the Practice of Art and Printmaking in 1999. I was always doing art like sewing, collage, and book art. In 2002, I began to do printmaking in Grafica at Mission Cultural Center. I made a decision to push myself and do my own art. I felt I was missing something in my life.

CN: So, you kept doing more printmaking.

AS: I love the printmaking process. You can gain confidence in so many steps. I see myself now more as a painter than as a printmaker. I have a deep love for color. I find through mono-print a more satisfying medium. It’s fun. I do sewing as a side project, and I see a relationship in the sewing and the printmaking. Formally, when sewing I am composing the same way as on paper.

CN: I see the structure. The way you divide space on the paper that is very similar to cutting and putting together these pieces of fabric when you are making the pillows.

AS: Yes, it is very similar. On the paper, I do more detailed work because I add silkscreen, and photos that are harder to replicate. My work on paper, I want it to be invested with a story -- something that has meaning. With the fabric, I am more relax about it. I go, whatever, it’s just a pillow. I use beautiful material people would not necessarily buy for themselves, but I like that they are so decadent, silk, velvet, and gold. Most people don’t think I am worth such a pillow, but I think, you are worth this pillow, have one. It’s playful, it’s fun.

CN: So, what kind of printmaking are you doing lately?

AS: Lately, I am doing layered work using stencils. I was working with Native American bead patterns. It is from an embroidered, warrior breast plate. I pulled the individual pieces out, and I played with the design. This is symbolic of an under-layered strata of Native American culture -- what the United States in founded on. There are all these pieces missing, and all these stories untold, and all this damage. The conquering of the United States, and all over Latin America has this underlaying damage. How you can still read the design even with all the pieces missing. How can you make something that is damaged still be beautiful. That is like life...

CN: So, what are working on right now?
AS: I have a series of prints that are cityscapes. I sit with a body of work for a year that I meditate upon -- until it tells me what to do. I take photographs of the urban landscape around San Francisco. Then, I make them into silhouettes, and I silkscreen them above an abstract layer of painting. So, there is a juxtaposition between the specific plate, and its background. They are my comments of what I like about the city.

CN: I think that would be a nice title: “Urban Landscapes” What do you think?

AS: That is what I think this body of works is because I want it to be real, and to have an element of magic, like magical realism in Latin American literature and Gabriel García Márquez. I also wanted them to be a little bit happy, because so much art is so sad, and devoid of color. It’s like a sin to make anything joyful.

CN: Let’s make it happy, then...