John Payne wrote in the L.A. Weekly "Anna Homler, L.A.-based but not often heard locally (she's a popular-in-Europe type), sings, in an invented language that 'nobody knows but everyone understands,' and plays a nice little assortment of wind-up clocks, toys and other mechanical doodads; her output is filtered through electronic devices..."[1] In Option Dean Suzuki wrote: "Homler is a Los Angeles-based performance artist in whose work art plays a central role.
The language is couched in lyrical and somewhat exotic melodies sung with a pure vocal style sans vibrato, which gives the work an ambience of authentic folk tradition" .
[2] In 1982, while driving through Topanga Canyon in her '61 Caddy, Anna Homler experienced and auto-epiphany: "I began spontaneously singing and chanting in a language I'd never heard before--word and rhythm were one."
Kateri Butler continues in an article in the L.A. Weekly, "Like the French deconstructionist movement, Anna transcends the mere word: 'I deal with the poetic, which releases us from the narrowness of our perceptions'.
[5] "She created Pharmacia Poetica '87, an ongoing installation and performance project exploring the tonal and symbolic properties of words and objects..."[6] In Wire, Ed Baxter writes that Homler's "style suits today's cut-and-paste aesthetic, but is perhaps rooted more firmly in the confrontational caberet and framed detritus of Kurt Schwitters, the pranks of Fluxus, the assemblages of Joseph Cornell, even the outré inventories of Charles Fort."
Other vessels include recognizable objects--magnetic cassette tape, typewriter erasing ribbon, wooden blocks with letters, fragments of untranslatablr language in liquid elixirs.
"[9] In 2011 Homler had an exhibition of Pharmacia Poetica installed at the Den Contemporary Art gallery at the Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles.
In a series of performances, the artist wears a mask of dough and peasant clothes as she sings shamanistic incantations in an inventive language that is at once playful and mysterious.
"[12] On the outside, Homler's Whale is a resplendent shimmering turquoise beast with huge tail fins that suggest both a rocket ship and an oversized creature of the sea, be it mechanical or mammalian.
Enter the belly of the beast and we are transported into an underwater piscean realm that is both mythic and magical, a temple of the deep decorated with tiny buddhas, seashells, aquatic creatures, and seaweed drapery.
Originally a vocalist, albeit a startling alien and surreal one, Homler has expanded her palette by deploying an extraordinary selection of toys, gadgets and gizmos to complement and alter her voice.
[13] On The Many Moods of Bread and Shed, (The Orchestra Pit Recordings) made by Homler with London based violinist and multi-instrumentalist Sylvia Hallett, you can hear the dedication to...everyday magic.
The Heart of No Place (2009), an independent film by Rika Ohara based on the life of Yoko Ono, includes music by Anna Homler and Bernard Sauser-Hall.