Anna Banana

Anna Banana
Anna Banana at the Ex Postal Facto mail art conference in San Francisco, February 2014.
Born	Anne Lee Long February 24, 1940 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Movement	Mail art
Website	http://mypage.uniserve.ca/~a_banana/

Anna Banana (born February 24, 1940 as Anne Lee Long in Victoria, British Columbia) is a Canadian artist known for her performance art, writing, and work as a small press publisher. She has been described as an "innovator, entrepreneur and critic", and pioneered the artistamp, a postage-stamp-size medium. She has been prominent in the mail art movement since the early 1970s, acting as a bridge between the movement’s early history and its second generation. As a publisher, Banana launched Vile magazine and the "Banana Rag" newsletter; the latter became Artistamp News in 1996.

Banana lives in British Columbia and operates Banana Productions, calling herself the "Top Banana." The International Art Post is the sole publication of Banana Productions, with 700 copies produced for each edition.

Banana attended the University of British Columbia from 1958 to 1963, graduating with an elementary academic teaching certificate. She taught for five years: two in public schools and three in Vancouver’s New School.

She began her career in Victoria as a fabric artist, where dissatisfaction with the marketing of her work led toward more-public expressions. Banana began her newsletter, the Banana Rag, for her Town Fool project in Victoria in 1971. She sent a copy to Vancouver artist Gary Lee Nova, who replied with an request list providing names, addresses and image requests of contemporary mail artists. This began a forty-year relationship with a worldwide, egalitarian art-communication network.

Like many mail artists, she embraced an alter ego which she incorporated into correspondence with Ray Johnson, General Idea and the network.