Farbwerte

Sissy Hyde is a German-born artist living in Los Angeles. Her formal education was at the University of Colorado and the San Francisco Art Institute, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture. Over the last 20 years she has worked in all media (ceramics, metal, stone, handmade paper, weaving, painting, and drawing). Sissy is also a comedic stage performer. Her main stage character is ‘Frau Doktor in the Laboratory’.

Sissy was dressed as ‘Frau Doktor in the Laboratory’ for this photo shoot.

Jonny Kahleyn took this photo and made this little interview…

JONNY: What’s your attitude towards Germany now?

SISSY: The last time I was in Germany was in 1997, on a short trip. Originally I had left in 1975,  but came back in ’79 and ’80 to work  over the summer and then “ab und zu” back home for visits.

Through the periodic travel and weekly conversations with relatives there, I’d kept up with trends in Germany, but just last year for the first time I got ” Heim-weh” when my aunt was telling me about the lovely summer’s bike-ride she had taken with a friend. ….They rode on the “Waldweg” through the cool woods on a warm afternoon and wound up at a “Gaststaette / Wirtshaus” where they just leaned up their bikes and proceeded inside for a great tasting lunch, and a “Radler-Mass”, which was so refreshing.

I haven’t had a “Radler-mass” since childhood, and don’t even drink, but the moment she said it I missed it. Even though I had never even had this experience, it was immediately something I felt I had missed!

I have always loved visiting Germany, …even for extended times, but eventually I feel somehow restricted and therefore eventually get “Unbehagen” and uncomfortable…. I’m somehow too American to be German. But, then when I’m in America I’m too well educated in a well rounded way, including Politics and History, am orientated and driven, and so I am somehow in many ways too German to be an American. It’s a paradox, one can’t really do anything about a paradox….one must live with it….

And so I try to travel when I can; since last summer I have been feeling “die Wanderlust fuer’s Heimatland”  again…. I’m planning a trip back home for next year if all goes well to refresh all the old senses again.

JONNY: How were you influenced by your German mother and an American father?

SISSY: My face is a complete and perfect fusion of both of their faces, but my German Oma raised me in her house, so she acted as both mother and father to me. I went to German school, and then Middle School, while my Mom worked, after my parents got a divorce. My Dad, by then a painter, returned to the U.S. when I was about 7 or 8, and so I feel I was very lucky to be raised by my Oma.

My Oma was a really well educated woman and the top matriarch in our family. The family business was medicine and had been for hundreds of years, and so we were all raised with her standards and values.

We all had a good understanding of how the human body works and a general understanding of diagnostics and general home treatments, as well as diet, nutrition and exercise knowledge.

My Oma read the paper daily, loved History, Politics, and telling stories, and passed on a lot of her life’s information to me. I have a fantastic memory and so all this information shaped me, and still is at my core. I love my Mom and we were excellent friends, but my Oma had more influence over me.

My Dad was a painter and there are home movies of him teaching me composition and colour-sense at age 2, and while he was still in Germany from 5 onward I was taken along to his “Ausstellungen” at the “Ateliers”, which I adored.

I started painting at 5 and have continually worked in one or more disciplines throughout my life, and one can say that “die Kunst liegt mir im Blut”.

JONNY: What do you remember most about your life in Germany?

SISSY: When I’ve recently spent time in Germany I remember struggles I may have had with “Beamten” and bureaucracy, even “Schaffner” over some fashion dispute, or through some benign interaction;
but when I’ve been gone for a long time: I remember the Christkindl-Markt in weather so cold you can see your breath hang in front of yourself like a veil. Standing on the sidewalks drinking hot “Glühwein”, smelling the “gebrannte Mandeln”, and eating “Bratwurst” so hot and dripping with juice, that the only thing to do is to bend forward so that the juice doesn’t drip on one’s clothes….

Or in summer strolling through the “Kirchweih’s”, and sitting outside in nice “Biergarten”‘s trading anecdotes with family and friends over ” a paar Kuehle Blonde”…

So I must admit that through the memory is fantastic it is subjective to being influenced by the recent experiences, I romanticize Germany while I’m in the US, and miss America while I’m in Germany, and can’t really relax until I get back home here.

I’m culturally and in my habits very German down to the way I eat each day, but the temperament is American, “Ich bin halt immer ein bisschen halb-hier, und halb-dort”.