July 9: photographer, fine artist and singer Kate Garner - Haysi Fantayzee- is 59-years-old today.

 

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Kathryn Mary Garner was born on July 9, 1954 in Wigan, Lancashire, England. Garner was expelled from high school at the age of 16. She became a runaway and joined The Children Of God. To escape the grasp of the cult she hitchhiked from London through Eastern Europe to India in 1970, where she lived for a year before being located by her parents.

She then attended art school at Blackpool in the North of England and later moved to London, where she began to both photograph and model for up and coming magazines.

Garner first came widely into the public eye as one third of the 1980s avant-garde, new wave pop project Haysi Fantayzee, along with other members Jeremy Healy and Paul Caplin.

Emanating from street arts scenes such as the Blitz Kids that were cropping up in London in the early 1980s, Haysi's music combined reggae, country and electro with political and sociological lyrics couched as nursery rhymes.

Catapulted to stardom by their visual sensibilities, Haysi Fantayzee combined their extreme clothes sense - described as combining white Rasta, tribal chieftain and Dickensian styles - with a quirky musical sound comparable to other new wave musical pop acts of the era, such as Bow Wow Wow, Adam and the Ants and Bananarama.

Haysi Fantayzee appeared several times on the BBC Television programme Top of The Pops. Despite being touted by some as "the next big thing," the group quickly disbanded after releasing three hit singles "John Wayne Is Big Leggy," "Shiny Shiny," "Holy Joe," and an album that went gold.

Garner then returned to painting, photography and video, launching a successful media arts career, starting with her collaboration with Sinéad O'Connor, in which she created memorable images of O'Connor for her 1987 debut, The Lion and the Cobra.

Garner has also photographed many musicians and celebrities. Among them are: Dr. Dre, Leigh Bowery, JT LeRoy, Angelina Jolie, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, David Bowie, Cameron Diaz, PJ Harvey, John Galliano, Björk and Kate Moss. Her work has appeared in the American and British versions of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.

Garner occasionally performs live acoustic music with her husband, Emit Bloch, with whom she lives in London, UK and San Francisco, CA.

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For more about Kate and Haysi Fantayzee, visit these Websites:

http://www.kategarner.org/ and

http://www.haysifantayzee.net/

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