“You have to be able to imagine the change you want for it to actually happen, “says Anna Fizyta, a transpersonal psychotherapist-artist and firm believer in the power of positive thinking. This Saturday, August 7th, she’ll be participating in the Mission Arts & Performance Project.
Anna creates what she calls a “public, nurturing environment for intention-making” in the heart of San Francisco by using a tree outside her Mission flat as her canvas.
Transformed recently and covered with hearts, Anna’s tree stands close to new Mission Community Market, just launched just two weeks ago, as well as the 24th Street BART station, and bike and pedestrian- friendly Valencia street.
Her project started as a Wishing Tree. The art installation held instructions for people to leave a personal wish, one for the community, and to most importantly, picture them coming true.
Visualizing, says Anna, “is the first big thing you do to create change.”
Applying strips of construction paper, string, and chain, Anna painted directions on hanging, wooden signs. Over two to three weeks in July, she collected around 500 wishes on small pieces of paper asking for everything from love and music, to health, and 50 million dollars. Although the city recently took down the signs, Anna’s kept the long garland of wishes.
The idea for a Wishing Tree came three years ago upon finding one close to Dolores Park. Eventually Anna headed over to Tuggey’s Hardware to make her own.
Plenty of artists have made Wishing trees before – perhaps Yoko Ono being the most famous. Yoko belonged to a “participatory art” movement that involved the audience. Indeed this is how she met John Lennon, when he visited her London exhibit in 1966. Her installation invited him to climb a ladder to find the word “YES” using a magnifying glass – one of my favorite love stories.
“It’s amazing the connections I’ve made through the tree,” says Anna, who relates, smiling. “I hear people out my window all the time.”
Through collaboration with her next door neighbors, including multimedia artist Alison Dale, who runs Art Larking, 24th and Bartlett’s become a popular intersection at community-building events like Sunday Streets. Between the two apartment buildings, tenants have featured sidewalk brunches with homemade waffles, bike-powered smoothie-making, and impromptu dance parties.
“The tree is an extension of my spiritual integrity,” she explains. This is so much how I believe the world works,and I have magic in my life, people say; I manifest things.”
Indeed, Anna’s Mission-based home reflects her beliefs. When searching for her dream living situation after bouncing through sublets and from a painful break-up, Anna wrote a letter to “the Universe” with a detailed list of what she wanted. Sharing a flat with three other women today – all California Institute of integral Studies students or graduates – she says the situation is ideal; it’s a “Goddess house” sanctuary with perfect housemates, great light, and a spacious common room to get creative.
But Anna’s faced disheartening obstacles too. When a grouchy neighbor complained, a city worker who only days before had participated with a wish for the tree had to take the whole thing down. Anna’s best friend-roommate Karen Wolfe took matters in her own hands, leading friends to write down self-loving thoughts and post them on the naked tree. Newly covered with small, paper hearts, the Affirmation Tree now continues to draw smiles and conversation.
“It’s not always easy to be positive and grateful, it’s a practice,” says Anna, who’s building her private psychotherapy practice at a tough economic time. “But as an artist, I get an idea in my head, and I feel I can manifest it.”
This Saturday, Anna will be re-building the Wishing Tree at MAPP’s Pathos-on-Harrison, located at 2754 Harrison between 23rd and 24th streets.
To learn about Anna visit www.Awakenedcreativity.org
Affirmation Tree
August 11, 2010 at 4:51 am
I live around the corner from the tree covered in pink hearts. even though I didn’t walk up to it to read the hearts, I knew it was a wishing tree, and it made me happy to see it there. (I was out of town for the original wishing tree.) that intersection is a major crossroads/accidental meeting place. I trust that both wishing trees have already entered into the alchemy of this intense, complex, restless and homey neighborhood. I’d like to meet your friends — we are neighbors in more ways than one. (one concern, maybe unfounded: when I see pictures of the tree with all those thumb tacks I think ‘Ouch!’. has anyone researched whether a bunch of tiny holes exposes the tree to diseases, fungus, or other problems?)
August 12, 2010 at 7:58 pm
I’ll ask Anna and put you in touch with her! Thanks!
August 12, 2010 at 11:11 pm
hi rebecca,
you can contact me via awakenedcreativity at gmail dot com.
so glad to hear the tree made you happy! i’d love to meet another kindred spirit
and i share your trepidation about the tacks. i think for the most part they’re just in the bark, but i am working on a tack-less system for wishes for the proposal that i’m preparing for the city department that’s going to give me a permit to put the original wishing tree sign and accoutrements back up.