Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexandra Chan
Hi Alexandra, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m a northerner by birth, born and raised in upstate New York, but I have deep family roots in Savannah and spent part of every year in the Forest City. My grandfather was a Chinese scholar and revolutionary named for the most powerful character in Chinese mythology–T’ai Peng. The Great Phoenix. But he landed in exile in Savannah, in 1889, on the night of the Great Savannah Fire, as a matter of fact, and joined one of the bucket lines at the Presbyterian Church. And you know what they say about phoenixes who land in the fire. They rise again! He was the first Chinese person in Savannah to marry and start a family, eventually having six hilarious and irreverent kids. For a couple of years, he also lived with my grandmother, Annie, at the Davenport House, during its tenement era. And ran a laundry out of what is now the Historic Kennedy Pharmacy. The family is now being honored with a special photography exhibit called Old Chan Magic: Chinese Roots and Southern Branches, at The Historic Kennedy Pharmacy. The title, Old Chan Magic, is a phrase borrowed from my new book, In the Garden Behind the Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth, and Magic. What I call Old Chan Magic is shorthand for the unique brand of personal, effervescent, inspirational “magic” my father and all of my elders had. I like to say they never ceased to walk with wonder, and they inspired others, too, to see life through a mythopoetic lens that was pure magic.
I came to Savannah every year to visit family, and I got married outside my Aunt G.G.’s house in Pulaski Square. But my journey “back” to Savannah for the Old Chan Magic exhibit and a celebration of the release of In the Garden Behind the Moon has been a long and winding one. I got my Ph.D. in Historical Archaeology based on three years of excavation I led at the last standing slave quarters in the North, at the Royall House & Slave Quarters Museum outside of Boston, MA. My first book was about that project–Slavery in the Age of Reason: Archaeology at a New England Farm. I taught for several years at the Vassar College Anthropology Department, and still engage in public outreach and education, both domestically and abroad, about the archaeology of early African Americans and their experiences under slavery in the North. Eventually I left academia to enter into “industry,” as they call it–archaeological consulting and contract work, where our biggest clients were agencies like the Department of Transportation, Fish & Wildlife, or the Army Corps of Engineers. I hiked 120 miles of planned pipeline through Maine wilderness one time, recording the remains of 19th-century farmsteads in its path. It’s a wonderful way to see the country, I can tell you that!
When the recession of 2009 hit, work dried up, and it gave me the courage to strike out on my own as a family, lifestyle, and business branding photographer, which I did for 11 years, winning Best Photographer of Portsmouth five years running. During these years, however, my mother had become terminally ill, and my father (who was in his nineties) had become “terminally old,” and my priorities shifted. I started Chinese brush painting lessons–not because I thought I would have any particular talent for it, but because I would do anything to just…”feel better.” My grief for my mom, who died in 2011, and anticipatory grief for my dad (who would die in 2016), were all-consuming, and I needed a grand intervention. Something so new that it would shock my system out of the all the fear and exhaustion. As it turned out, I did have some talent with the painting and within a year of taking my first lesson, I opened “Rising Phoenix Arts,” my online custom Chinese brush painting and calligraphy business.
Archaeologist, photographer, painter, now author…. It sounds like a lot. But in fact what ties it all together is watching people and telling stories. Story is the through-line for all of these creative pursuits, and it is just one of those wonderful mysteries of the universe the way they all ended up coming together in this one lifetime project: my new book, In the Garden Behind the Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth, and Magic. A captivating family portrait and an urgent call to awaken to the magic and wonder of daily life. “Old Chan Magic” can show you how. Filled with over 140 full-color original Chinese brush paintings and vintage photos of an unforgettable cast of characters, it really is more than just a book and has been described by readers as “a companion and an experience,” “a healing cup of ginger tea,” and “a beautiful gift to the world.” It also just won Best Book of the Year (2024) for Multicultural Nonfiction from American Book Fest.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I think, if there were struggles, it was with understanding what the Big Picture was. I felt, at the time, that I might appear to others to be “bouncing around” – I’m a professor! No, I’m a consultant! A photographer! A painter! Just kidding, I’m an author! I could feel the way others didn’t understand my choices to leave careers that I was truly at the top of my game in to start something new where I was “a nobody.” Over and over again. I didn’t fully understand it myself, but I knew what my soul was telling me it needed and, in many ways, I really did not have a choice. They say, when you hear “the Call” in life, you can decide to not answer it (and usually, it is hard to answer the call because a true calling will demand that you leave your comfort zone). But you can’t run from it, and the call will continue to get louder and louder until you answer it. Some people STILL don’t answer it, and that’s where suffering begins. So, when I heard that call to do something new, and on the surface of things, unrelated to what I had been doing, I resisted for as long as I could because I was scared. But it wouldn’t let me rest, and eventually, as this process repeated several times over the years, I learned to trust in that small inner voice that tells you to “do this,” “go there,” and “why not?” Eventually, I could look back over my life and see that that voice had never led me astray. So when it came up once again, telling me to hang up my camera, and ditch a huge client base I had spent over a decade building up, I was scared, but I also knew I could trust that voice to lead me true. Hadn’t my life thus far shown that it was so? And it was. I wrote the book. And only now, seeing it all tied up neatly with a bow in this one beautiful object, can I see all the threads of the tapestry for what they were: strands of different color, texture, length, or size, but all part of the same beautiful picture, all telling the same story. And while I didn’t know that when it was happening, my soul did. My soul could see it all. I’m so grateful I listened to it.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am an award-winning photographer, a Chinese brush painter, and an author. I think I am most proud of having been able to carve out my best creative life for myself, and with my new book, also help others to reawaken to their soul’s natural state, which I believe is curiosity, discovery, and wonder. My ways of creative self-expression, be it through the camera, at the end of a brush, or words on a page, are stirring to others. They tap something universal that many people respond to. Many have called it healing. I think that’s part of the magic of the universe. When we reach for something to heal ourselves, it often ends up being something that heals others as well. What a beautiful energetic exchange.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
There’s a buddhist saying that “when the student is ready, the teacher will come.” I found my Chinese brush painting teacher, Bruce Iverson, at a farmer’s market in New Hampshire. He is an older white man who does Chinese style painting and, deep in the heart of New England, where anchor and boat themes reign supreme, you could have knocked me over with a feather to see Chinese artwork at the local farmer’s market, let alone painted by someone who is not in any way Chinese. I signed up for his mailing list, and took several workshops with him over the next couple of years and we have become good friends. He is also now commemorated forever in In the Garden Behind the Moon. The reader will meet him in the chapter called Rising Phoenix.
Pricing:
- Prices for any budget, from $24 fine art prints to large hanging wall scrolls of several hundred dollars
- In the Garden Behind the Moon is $25, available any place books are sold, also at the Historic Kennedy Pharmacy
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alexandrachan.com (book stuff); https://www.risingphoenixarts.com/ (art stuff)
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexkachan; www.instagram.com/risingphoenixarts
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alexandrachancreative
