The Painter The Photographer The Alchemist

Double Double 2022-11

DOUBLE DOUBLE 2022-11
The Painter. The Photographer. The Alchemist.
A Holly Lee and Lee Ka-sing Publication
First published in Canada by OCEAN POUNDS
November 2022
ISBN: 978-1-989845-53-0
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Photography, Visual Art, Poetry, Literature, Culture
Authors: Anita Kunz, Holly Lee, Lee Ka-sing
Copyright © Ocean Pounds 2022
Individual Copyrights belong to the Artists and Writers.
All Rights Reserved.
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from this book, please write to mail@oceanpounds.com
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The Painter. The Photographer. The Alchemist.
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Front cover image: Anita Kunz
End pages: Lee Ka-sing
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Lee Ka-sing
Essay on Alchemy
Book 2 (2017)
28 photographs

Anita Kunz
Original Sisters:
Portraits of Tenacity
and Courage
A selection of 50 paintings from a series of portraits
dedicated to women of accomplishments. The book
was published by Random House Canada in 2021,
with a foreword by Roxane Gay.

Ada Blackjack
Hero of the Arctic
Ada Lovelace
The world’s first computer programmer

Adelaide Herrmann
Vaudeville performer dubbed the Queen of Magic
Alice Guy Blache
French cinema pioneer

Angela Davis
Political activist, philosopher and author
Angela Ruiz Robles
Inventor of the mechanical
encyclopedia (precursor to the e-book)

Anna Akhmatova
Poet
Anna Mae Aquash
Mi’kmaq activist

Anonymous
The first artists of the human species were likely female
Augusta Savage
Educator, social activist and portrait sculptor

Camille Claudel
Sculptor
Candace Pert
Neuroscientist and pharmacologist

Caroline Earle White
Animal protectionist
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Astronomer, astrophysicist

Christine Jorgensen
Transgender woman known in the U.S
for her gender reassignment surgery
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary
Princess who gave up her wealth to care for the poor, patron saint of the Secular Franciscan Order

Hatshepsut
Longest-reigning female pharaoh
Hedy Lamarr
Movie star who also invented the frequency hopping technology

Hilma Af Klint
Artist, mystic whose abstract paintings were influenced by spiritualism
Hypatia
Mathematician, astronomer and philosopher

Ida B. Wells
Writer, activist for African Americans equal justice
Irena Sendler
Humanitarian rescuing Jews from WWII

Irna Phillips
Actress and writer for radio and TV who developed the modern soap opera
Jeanne De Clisson
Former noblewoman turned privateer

Jeanne Labrosse
Balloonist, parachutist, and aviation pioneer
Jeffrey Catherine Jones
Transgender woman illustrator and comic
artist in the fantasy art genre

Josephine Baker
Iconic dancer and singer garnering most popularity in Paris
Juliane Koepcke
German Peruvian mammalogist

Lady Mary wortley Montagu
Aristocrat moved to Istanbul and witnessed
the first form of a smallpox vaccine
Lise Meitner
Physicist who contributed to the discovery
of nuclear fission

Elizabeth Magie
Writer and feminist, created the
precursor to the board game
Monopoly
Lorraine Hansberry
Writer, civil right activist

Louise Lecavalier
Dancer and choreographer, an icon in the
world of contemporary dance
Margaret Keane
Painter recognized for her oversized,
doe-like eyes of her subjects

Maria Montessori
Physician, innovator in childhood education
Maria Sibylla Merian
Scientific illustrator and naturalist famous for her
studies of insects

Marie Skłodowska–Curie
Physicist and chemist pioneering research on radioactivity
Maud Wagner
Circus performer and the first female tattoo artist in the United States

Nina Simone
Pianist, singer, songwriter and civil rights activist
Noor Inayat Khan
British spy in WWII, first female wireless
operator to assist the French Resistance

Queen Charlotte
England's first Black queen
Rachel Carson
Marine biologist and author, one of the key
figures in the modern environmental movement

Remedios Varo
Surrealist artist
Ruby Bridges
First African American child in an
all-white public elementary school

Saint AEbbe The Younger
Martyr, cut her nose to avoid rape by Viking marauders
Stormé Delarverie
Gay rights activist

Temple Grandin
Animal behavior expert who is on the autism spectrum
Vivian Maier
Street photographer who was discovered
and celebrated only after her death

Yma Sumac
Peruvian American soprano
Zofia Posmysz
Journalist and author known
for her novel The passenger

Anita Kunz is a Canadian-born artist and
illustrator living in Toronto. Her work has
been published and exhibited internationally
for four decades. Her work has been featured
regularly in and on covers of many magazines,
including Time, Rolling Stones, and the New
York Times Magazines. She has illustrated
covers for the New Yorker and more than
fifty book jackets. Kunz has been inducted
into the Society of Illustrators stamp. She has
been appointed Officer of the Order of Canada
(QC), and has received the Queen Elizabeth II
Diamond Jubilee Medal.
The portraits in the collection of “Original
Sisters: Portraits of Tenacity and Courage”
bring the accomplishments of trailblazers,
leaders, mentors, and rebels together in
a series of paintings that embody Anita’s
approachable and engaging style. The entire
Original Sisters collection, with 365 portraits,
is on public display at TAP Centre for
Creativity, London, Ontario, from November
3rd, 2022 to January 4th, 2023.

A song is a painting is
a portrait is a prose
written by Holly Lee
From Barber to Agee to Evans
The first time I heard James Agee’s words were set to music, and sung by a soprano
with a beautiful voice. I didn’t know him then, and gradually get to know him a little
more. Not enough. Because of the music, the words and the poetry, I was driven to buy
his book A Death in the Family.
Agee’s rapturous prose-poem, Knoxville: Summer, 1915 was written in less than an
hour and a half, and on his revision, stayed 98 percent faithful to the original writing.
When I heard the music for the first time, I immediately fell for it. I was eager to
know, who’s the composer, who’s the lyricist, who performed it. It was Samuel Barber,
who set Agee’s Knoxville to music, and the version that I’d heard was sung by Renée
Fleming. Obviously, my knowledge in contemporary classical music is as limited as my
proficiency in 20th Century literature. But that doesn’t matter, I’ve become infatuated
by both composer and writer since.

Described as “lyric rhapsody” by Barber, he used about 1/3 of the prose-poem for
the score, conjuring up a 16-minute dramatic song for soprano and orchestra. There
is a universality of idyllic, nostalgic beauty in the work, that even for a person from
the Far East could grasp and resonate. The shortened prose set in lines was already
very impressive, but reading the original prose; I was enraptured with the free flow of
language, the meticulous observation of everyday life in amplified details, sentences
filled with humanity and purity of the heart.
On the bookshelf there is an old book I bought in the late eighties, which I rarely
touch, and remember only its approximate contents. It was about the Farm Security
Administration project; about some photographs taken by Walker Evans and text
written by James Agee—a documentation of the lives of three impoverished tenant
farmers during America’s Great Depression. I bring this up because, after some twenty
years, I finally picked up Walker Evans’s 650 pages biography and start reading. It
was from this point I remember the book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”, the book
I mentioned above. The book, with its photographs and text, left the world an indelible
impression on the poverty-stricken American South in the 30s. In it, I found a written
account of Agee by Evans. I was struck by its vividness and unconventional style of
writing, full of wit, beaming with life and personality. It is a “written” portrait of James
Agee. Walker Evans is not only a great photographer, he is unequivocally a brilliant
writer.
I could have ignored, and kept ignoring Agee’s prose and poetry, and Evans’s
photography, had I not been touched incidentally by Barber’s Knoxville. Music leads
to words, and words lead to imagery, which brings me back to writing. As I learn more
about Barber’s music, I’m impacted by his Adagio for Strings, which I have heard
before, but not knowing: it is one of the saddest compositions in contemporary classical
music.
The Original Sisters to The Golden Lotus
Anita Kunz acknowledged women of significance, known or unknown, with her brush
strokes. Recently she has created a substantial body of work, bringing illustrious
females front and centre to the printed page, naming the book “Original Sisters”.
Drawing one portrait a day, the two year lockdown period gave her plenty of quiet
time to focus on this project. Most characters in the series are long gone, and some
she was only made aware of from her friends. The way she portrayed the figures relied
mainly on public sources, and images she found on the Internet—very generic, and
generalized. With her experience and well-versed skill, she deftly picked up heat and
intensity of the individuals, modified and idealized with her personal touch.
In the portrait of Anna Akhmatova, she set her against a red background, her sharp
profile characterized by the nasal bump, and a fringe. Her hair is tied back into a
soft bun, a red bead necklace hung down her shoulders stressing their roundness by
the low-cut V-shaped dress. One can almost hear Akhmatova’s line: you will hear
thunder and remember me, and think: she wanted storms. Camille Claudel is another
beguiling portrait. The overall tone of the painting clings to an earthly brown. Her head
and shoulders are elongated; her hair unkempt, raining down in rings of frenzy; her
face is like porcelain, cracked and broken like her mental state, her intelligence and
virtuosity are reflected by the delicately painted French embroidered lace. After almost
close to a century, Camille Claudel’s sculptures are widely accepted, and proclaimed
as great as Rodin’s—her once teacher, mentor, and lover.
As Kunz celebrates the achievement of distinguished women in pictures, I contemplate
on the submissive roles Chinese women have endured over the centuries, ever more
feeling the privilege of living in a better, freer world of gender and racial equality. In
1989, I was invited to work on a multi-platform art project, which had incorporated
dance, performance, drama, music and photography. It was based loosely on the
Chinese classical novel: The Golden Lotus. The novel took place in the 12th century,
and encompassed many female characters, which made me think about the three-inch
golden lotus—the synonym for the bound feet of women. I proposed to take a suite
of portraits of the artists. Not deliberately, but out of subconsciousness, many of the
portraits I took possessed strong gestural bearings of the hands and feet.
When I was asked to participate in The Golden Lotus Project, the Tiananmen Square
protests had just started in China. My approach to the portrait series of the performers
and musicians was not meant to be direct interpretation of the characters in the book,
and the six weeks of protests in China ending in bloodshed perturbed me immensely.
It reflected clearly in my portrait of the musician Peter Suart. Suart, a young English
lad born in Hong Kong, was in Beijing during the incident. He was a first-hand witness

ut left the capital before the brutal crack down. We worked together on the idea of
the shot. In the shooting session, he wore the leather trench coat he bought in Beijing,
grabbing two spiky Indonesian musical instruments acting as sharp claws; he spread
his wings and soared like an eagle. The background was an old poem, composed and
made into woodcut by Ka-sing. The poem was about free will, and choice. Tea or
coffee. My title of the work echoed these thoughts. It came to be: 89 • The Golden
Lotus • Footsteps of June (1989) 八 九 • 金 瓶 梅 • 六 月 前 後 .
taking off my wartime garments. I’m putting on my old time wear. Gently, gently, I’m
releasing and combing my long-tangled hair. Before the mirror I stare, ornamenting my
brow with gold floral print cut in pairs. Stepping outside, I’m calling to my comrades.
Shocked and startled, not even my confidant recognizes me! Oh, my companions
for twelve long years. Listen to me, and look. Some distance away, among the thick
bushes, a male rabbit scurried north; a female rabbit looked vague and lost. Both
running, dear mates, are you able to tell if this one a buck, or that one a doe?”
Buck or Doe: The Ballad of Mulan 木 蘭 辭 , a re-imagination
She became a warrior by necessity, at a time when well water could not be mixed with
river water. She was that quiet water knitting from dawn to dusk; her sole music came
from her own breathing; her loom click click and click click.
A troubled, unrest heart. How was her old father to fight? The Khan was merciless;
soldiers were just numbers, recruited fast and perished fast. She would take up the
duty, cut her hair, bind her breasts, wear her boots, and head to the market. East to get
a fine stead; west, a saddle; south, a bridle, and north a long whip. Farewell farewell
my parents. By dusk I’d be resting by the Yellow River, another dusk on the black
mountains of Mongolia. Your calling became so feeble, I couldn’t bear to hear.
Ten thousand miles she rode and battled, swept through fields and mountain passes.
The north wind blew, the gong hit at midnight. Her armour shimmered under cold,
silvery light. For ten years she fought on countless battlefields, battered bodies laid
bare, and unsettled. For ten years, she combated and survived, returned gloriously,
kneeling to meet her emperor. On his high throne he offered her praise, high rank, and
gold. All these to her, were moon in the water, flower in the mirror. All she asked for
was a good horse, accompanying her in her toilsome journey, speeding her safely back
to her village; back to home, sweet home.
Postscript
In our age, most people associate Mulan as a Disney cartoon character of Asian origin,
a woman disguised as a man going to battle for his aging father. Mulan is a fictional
folk heroine from China’s Northern dynasties (Northern Wei, 386-534 AD), a time
when many famous Buddhist rock-cut cave temples were constructed at Yungang
and Longmen. Mulan is believed to be of Chinese/Xianbei ancestry (no bound feet!).
Mulan is perhaps even a tribal name, leaving the highly regarded heroine, like
many others, anonymous. But her brave deeds have survived and inspired people for
many centuries. The Ballad of Mulan is collected from oral traditions, transcribed
into written language, as a beautiful rhymed song. Though there are many English
translations of this ballad available on the Internet, I have the urge to re-imagining the
scene, and re-writing it in a prose form.
Her news of returning reached home faster than her feet. Her father, mother walked
out of the city arm-in arm. Her neighbours all came out to greet. Her sister rouged her
cheeks in rosy red; her brother whetted his knife for pigs and sheep.
Entering from east chamber door, settling on west chamber bed, she sings, “I’m

Holly Lee
89 • The Golden Lotus
• Footsteps of June
八 九 • 金 瓶 梅 •
六 月 前 後
15 photographs

Mui Cheuk Yin 梅 卓 燕
performer

Peter Suart 彼 得 小 話
musician

Lindsay Chan 陳 令 智
performer

Kung Chi Shing 龔 志 成 , Peter Suart 彼 得 小 話
musicians

Kung Chi Shing 龔 志 成
musician

Pia Ho 何 秀 萍
performer

Sunny Pang 彭 錦 耀
choreographer

Miguel Zermeno
performer

Norman Fung 馮 唸 慈
performer

Robert Fung 馮 萬 剛
performer

Norman Fung 馮 唸 慈 , Sunny Pang 彭 錦 耀
choreographers

Pia Ho 何 秀 萍 , Margaret Lee 李 翠 玲
performers

Margaret Lee 李 翠 玲
performer

Frances Tao 陶 馥 蘭
performer

89 • The Golden Lotus • Footsteps of June
八 九 • 金 瓶 梅 • 六 月 前 後

89 • The Golden Lotus • Footsteps of June
八 九 • 金 瓶 梅 • 六 月 前 後
Fifteen photographs in a series
12 x 16 inch, FUJICHROME Super gloss reversal print
(1989)
This photo project was within a larger, multi-layered
project sparking off a dance performance accompanied
with live music, and an art installation—inspired and
created around the Chinese classic novel The Golden
Lotus. Composed in the early 17th Century the novel
is considered one of the six major classics of Chinese
literature.
When I was asked to join the Golden Lotus Project, the
Tiananmen Square protests had just started in China.
The series I proposed to take portraits of the performers
and musicians was never direct interpretation of the
characters in the book. But the six weeks of protests
ended in bloodshed did affect the way I felt and the
feelings injected into these photographs, and the title of
the exhibition echoed these thoughts.
89 • The Golden Lotus • Footsteps of June is not a big
series; it consists only of fourteen prints. But looking
back, it was a pleasant collaboration with the artists
involved in this project. The photographs were shown
at 97 Brasserie and Le Cardre Gallery (1989) in Hong
Kong. A few years later, three images from the series was
exhibited at Contemporary Photography from Mainland
China, Hong Kong and Taiwan (1994, Hong Kong Arts
Centre) as C-type prints in a bigger size (image 18”x36”,
frame size 50”35”).
Published here, are images directly scanned from the
suite which was originally exhibited at Le Cardre Gallery.
Print size is 12”x16”, reversal photographs printed from
colour transparencies.