[1] Her archive of mail art-related papers is housed at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia.
In 1971, she declared herself the Town Fool of Victoria and organized a series of interactive events, eventually creating a newsletter, the Banana Rag, to reach a broader audience.
Anna Banana, which eventually became her legal name,[9] was soon incorporated into correspondence with Ray Johnson, General Idea and the international postal art network.
[2] In 1973 Banana moved to San Francisco to join mail-art friends known as the Bay Area Dadaists, who produced Neo-Dadaist performances, mail art and publications.
[10] Originally envisioned as a place to document and acknowledge network activity, Vile was a combination of art, poetry, fiction, letters, photos and manipulated advertisements from Life magazine.
Gwen Allen wrote, "FILE would continue to publish the Image Bank image request lists until its Fall 1975 issue, but it would gradually distance itself from the mail art scene, prompting a string of takeoffs, including VILE—started, according to editor Anna Banana, in response to FILE's growing disdain for mail art'—and later, BILE and SMILE.
Banana cited as influences Dada humor, therapeutic madness and the Bohemianism of the Bay Area during the 1960s and early 1970s.
After returning to Canada in 1981, Banana published About Vile, a history of the magazine with a mail-art backlog and an account of a 1978 European tour by her and Gaglione (a documented conclusion of the pair's working relationship).
From 1983 to 1985, Banana worked in the production department of Intermedia Press, where she learned full-color printing (a skill used in her 1988 publication, International Art Post).
The works were financed cooperatively, with participating artists receiving 500 copies of their stamp and Banana Productions retaining the remainder for sales and promotion.
Other print appearances include "The Transformation of Anne Long" in the March 1972 Maclean's magazine and "Banana Olympics: Sporty Art or Arty Sport" in the September 1980 Recreation Reporter.
She filled the one-inch-by-one-column ad holes with invitations to her events; the first entry was for the 1974 Columbus Day Parade, offering "degrees of Bananology" to those who participated or sent banana news.
Banana and Gaglione finished the year with a Canadian tour (Toward the Future, a program of futurist theatre works) in fifteen cities across Canada from Victoria to Halifax.
[15][16] Throughout the 1970s, Banana continued with parade entries, April Fool's Day events, and collaborations with Bay-area Dadaists on Dada sound poetry and Italian Futurist syntheses presented at the San Francisco Book Fair, San Jose State University and the Saturday Afternoon Club in Ukiah.
That year her Going Bananas Fashion Contest was also hosted live on CKVU's Vancouver Show, attracting 25 participants.
As with all her interactive works, Banana is more interested in ascertaining how much her audience will engage in her research than whether the images she projects are considered art.