(NECN: Greg Wayland) - What is art?
In this case, it's a young woman in a chic black suit on a Boston dock pulling on a pair of stylish heels, and her life jacket - of course - before she loads wooden chairs in a rubber dinghy and, with the dinghy in tow, heads down Fort Point Channel in her kayak.
I can almost hear Handel's Water Music Suite as she paddles by bemused onlookers.
Then below one of Boston's busiest bridges, performance artist Heidi Kayser gets settled aboard her little eight-by-eight American dream island, about the size of an office cubicle. A raft, really, anchored in place.
White picket fence, garden, tree, a mail box full of mail! The American Dream home, right? Just sort of flat and tiny -- and floating -- for all on land to gawk at -- and gawk at the reporter arriving by water taxi to get to the bottom of this, if he doesn't get to the bottom of the channel first.
I was a little unsteady at first, and startled at how small a space Heidi works on, where she does such things as ironing, eating lunch, typing on her laptop. Every little act of life is a performance, in her estimate, and in a world in which so much of what we do is public, this is like a back patio with low walls. Everybody can see.
I had a seat on on of the chairs she'd borne out to this place she's dubbed her Remodeling Project. The deck is a "dock" built for her by Great Northern Docks of Maine.
We checked Heidi's mail from friendly boaters.
Twelve letters addressed to "an empty island," "kayak lady," "channel mail box" and one person wrote, "what's up dock?"
She'll stay out for six hours at a stretch. It's an imaginary office, or home, with the all too real city towering all around.
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"Well, the point is it's art, so I guess there really doesn't need to be a point," said Kayser. "But I like to think about this as an investigation of shared ideas that we all have about space."
It's about success, too. American-style.
It's not often you see people out in the middle of the channel with a suit on -- and the shoes! Calvin Klein.
It's symbolism, public art, and I guess we made a great picture out there. People kept snapping photos. That's art, too.
It's just life! But you're doing an action.
"The best times are morning rush hour, lunch time and evening rush hours and evening rush hour is the best," said Kayser.
Grants from foundations kept her vision afloat.
"And I don't have any more money to do it," said Kayser.
Well, there you go, that's the old problem, isn't it? no matter what you do -- art or life -- you need money.
So she's done next week. After that, it's off the University of California at San Diego for a degree in Fine Arts.
There's lots of water out there, so she should have a dandy graduate thesis.
