Sayaka Ganz Newletter

It’s peaceful Wednesday evening and I’m listening to insects chirping outside my window. It has been a crazy couple of weeks for me. I planned an emergency trip to Japan due to a family member being ill, only to get canceled the evening before takeoff. Last week there was a fire in the building that houses a shared maker space that I belong to. Luckily I had just completed and installed my latest sculpture two weeks ago so I had almost nothing stored in that space, but some of the members were not so fortunate and it will take some great amount of time and effort to get the space up and running again. Although I myself am safe and well, I feel as though I’m sitting still in the eye of a storm. How are you doing? I hope you and your loved ones are feeling cared for.

The pandemic and lockdown and the changes in my schedule created a pause in my creative process and I made a spontaneous decision to take a few online courses that happened to pop up on my email. One of these courses was called “Express the Music of Your Soul”, with Chloe Goodchild. My close friends know that I have always really loved singing karaoke, but I had never thought of singing or any vocal work as something that might potentially work its way into my studio practice. To my surprise, very early on in the 7 week long course during a small-group exercise to take turns spontaneously make any sound that came to us, one of my classmates told me that when she listened to me with her eyes closed she saw a whale swimming in the ocean. Since then I have started to make songs of animals. These are experimental non-verbal expressions. Just as I describe the form, movement and spirit of the animal using plastic objects in my sculpture, I use my voice and sounds to describe the spirit and the movement of the animal and the surrounding environment.

I’m so excited to share with you my first produced song! Please click on the image below to check out the song.

Post recording production work was done by my musical genius friend Jon Gillespie of Dream Rodeo.

Original photo by Teresa Stephens of 3rdfloorphotos.