Found Art by Leeana Tankersley.
Debut author Leeana Tankersley constructs a literary collage of memories and mementos from living in the Middle East during the Iraq War in her travel memoir, Found Art: Discovering Beauty in Foreign Places (Nov. 2009). She reflects on discovering beauty in a foreign land by weaving together her experiences living in the Persian Gulf for a year.
After marrying a Navy SEAL, Tankersley moved over 8,000 miles away from her home in San Diego to Bahrain where her husband was stationed. She retraces her steps through the Middle East, and she recalls the subtle changes in herself that left her utterly transformed. Somewhere between bartering in a souq, a Middle Eastern market, and wearing a borrowed abaya, an Islamic overgarment, to tour the Grand Mosque, Tankersley found a profound beauty in the unknown that sunk beneath her skin.
Found Art is an insightful collection of stories that Tankersley crafts into a literary piece of artwork. With an artist’s eye she combines bits of memories and trinkets – a handwritten note from Kuwait, a braid of fringe from a Persian rug, a Navy SEAL Trident – to create her own piece of Found Art. She celebrates what most would overlook – a receipt from the Russian-Georgian restaurant on Louisiana Street, a bit of basting thread – to piece together a work of unexpected beauty.
“Writing, for me, is often about two things,” says Tankersley, “creative processing and authentic giving. The book has been my way of working through, and then salvaging, the bits and pieces of Bahrain. In that sense, I wrote it for myself, so that I would never forget. Also, I wrote the book for those who are feeling lost, as I have felt so often. Ideally it offers the honest gifts of permission and validation and hope and beauty.”
Perfect for book clubs or small groups, Tankersley includes discussion prompts broken down by chapter for personal or group reflection. Tankersley invites readers into her deepest insecurities and her greatest joys of living in a foreign place. Her writing encourages readers to discover the beauty of the foreign places in their own lives – whether it be a year abroad or entering a new season of life.
Leeana Tankersley
A native of San Diego, Leeana Tankersley received her B.S. in English from Liberty University and her M.A. in English from West Virginia University. After marrying her husband, Steve, Leeana lived in the Middle East during the Iraq war and returned to San Diego to work at Flood Church. She and Steve now live in Coronado, California with their twins Luke and Lane.
Learn more about Leeana at http://www.gypsyink.com/.
Found Art
Release: Nov 2009
Hard cover, 224 pp.
ISBN: 031029133X
Available at Amazon.com
An Interview with Leeana Tankersley about writing Found Art, the book:
Where did you get the idea for the book? What compelled you to write it?
The book really unfolded out of Ecclesiastes 3, a Scripture that has been meaningful to me for years.
When I read, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. . . He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (vs 1, 11), the metaphor of found art just clicked for me. God is making beauty out of so many things that we don’t automatically see as beautiful. I immediately became attached to the metaphor because it so clearly defined and represented and clarified my own believing and unbelieving.
I then used the 28 different seasons named in the passage as the 28 chapter titles in Found Art.
In a word, God compelled me to write it. That may sound annoyingly overspiritual, but it’s just the simple truth. I was sitting on the floor in Bahrain asking God to show me what he had next for me. We were returning to the States in just weeks and, despite applying for a few different teaching jobs, I had nothing lined up. God invited me, in that moment, to consider turning my mad notes and scribbles into a book. Fast-forward three years . . . after some running and dodging and nay-saying, I found myself sitting on the ground again, this time at the beach in Coronado, and God asked me to answer a very important question, “Leeana, what do you want?” I knew I had to decide if I was going to answer his call to write or if I was going to continue making excuses. I chose to write, and two years later, Found Art was published.
What are the major themes of the book?
The book is a parallel journey through foreign places: the literal foreign place of Bahrain as well as the foreign places of change, identity, shame, redemption, loss, grief, healing, and the strange scraps of beauty that emerge in and through it all.
What kind of research did you have to do for the book?
I had to go back and really recapture myself during our year in Bahrain. The most vital resource I had was my journals, notebooks containing all kinds of scraps from Bahrain: bits of conversation, napkins with notes scribbled all over them, pictures, observations, thoughts on newlywed marriage, prayers, confessions, grief over the war, poetry, musings. Of course, when I was recording my experience, I had no idea it would become the raw material for a book, so what was recorded was just what struck me as important in those real-time moments.
So, obviously, I poured over the Bahraini journals, which were raw and vivid.
I also read emails I sent and received during that year, talked and talked with Steve about his take on our experience and his memory of me during that time, and interviewed friends who walked closely with me through the entire transition of going and coming. My goal was to really try and get back in my Bahrain skin, so I revisited books and movies and music and food that had been meaningful to me during that time. I even spent time visualizing myself getting off the plane, opening the drapes in Capital Centre, smelling the souq, feeling the rugs between my toes, hearing the call to prayer.
I had to do some additional digging on certain facts about the Grand Mosque that I remembered in general but needed in specific detail. I had to re-acquaint myself with the exact geography of Bahrain, what was in proximity to what. And, I had to be sure I had all my facts straight concerning quite a few details about the war.
What made you connect “found art” with your spiritual journey?
When I look at a salvage yard, I see all kinds of possibilities. Someone else probably sees junk, but I see this strange kind of beauty that requires a vision for what could be. The rust and the chipped paint and the distressed wood and the left-for-deadness of the whole scene create such interest and possibility.
I’m learning that life is actually strikingly similar. The beauty is often well concealed among the painful imperfections. I love the idea of seeing this as a kind of art instead of a failing or some cosmic mistake. After all, it is our need (our beautifully paint-chipped souls), not our proficiency, that connects us to God.
What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
I hope, more than anything, that readers find themselves in my story, that a light of clarity and awareness is turned on in their lives where they were formerly confused or shamed or numbed or doubting. When we find ourselves in someone else’s story, we often find validation, healing, understanding, and redemption. And that common experience is the portal into the larger story, God’s story.
Reviews: The tour ends today and since I received the book late didn’t finish it, so I’m not reviewing it at this time. All I have to say is, ” I can’t wait to finish! At this point it’s one of the best reads I have had in awhile!”
leeana says
Thank you so much for taking the time to read Found Art and for participating in the blog tour! I hope the book continues to be meaningful to you as you finish reading it!!