Avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson calls Glen Ellyn upbringing idyllic

Laurie Anderson vividly remembers the night she almost drowned her two little brothers in a Glen Ellyn lake.

In her new impressionistic movie "Heart of a Dog," opening Friday at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, the experimental artist considers matters of life and death. She recalls how, as a young girl, she took her twin brothers in a stroller across a frozen lake.

The ice gave way. The stroller sank.

She dived in. Grabbed one. Couldn't find the other.

She went back in.

Found him. Brought him up.

She took her brothers home and told her mother what happened.

"I stood there with icicles dangling from my nose," Anderson said. "I expected my mother to say, 'How could you have done that? You almost drowned your brothers! What were you thinking?' That's a normal mom.

"She paused and looked away, as if she were looking into the future and pondering what would be the best thing to say to me at this moment," Anderson said. Then, her mother simply remarked, "What a great swimmer you are!"

"I was astounded to be treated like that, instead of someone who was careless and stupid," Anderson said. "That made a huge, huge difference in my life. I felt almost ashamed when she complimented me like that and had been so kind. I was so grateful."

Anderson, a Glenbard West High School cheerleader, would go on to become a world-famous performance artist, musician and composer. She's also an inventor, having created multiple electronic musical instruments.

"Heart of a Dog" is Anderson's latest project. She is perhaps best known for her 1981 work "O Superman," her 1986 concert film "Home of the Brave" and her scores to Spalding Gray's films "Swimming to Cambodia" and "Monster in a Box."

For 21 years, she became a professional and personal partner to the late Lou Reed, legendary musician, singer, songwriter and creative force behind the Velvet Underground. They married in 2008.

You'd think an avant-garde artist such as Anderson would have recoiled from the relatively sedate and tranquil suburban atmosphere of Glen Ellyn.

Quite the opposite.

"I never felt like I didn't belong," the 68-year-old performer said. "I loved to read and there were lots of kids there who loved to read. I was also a cheerleader, which I can't believe now. But I loved doing that. I had a blast!"

Anderson graduated from Glenbard West in 1965. She still comes back home to meet up with a few high school friends from time to time. But she skips the formal class reunions.

"I have to say I had a lot of fun in high school," Anderson said. "We would drive to games, and things were just so weird. For some reason we were driving cars! But we hardly knew how to drive. We had just gotten our driver's licenses.

"I remember one time we were driving to a game and the steering wheel came off. We just handed it around the car! I don't remember how we actually made it to that game. It was such an idyllic time for me. I have wonderful memories of that time."

Anderson, who plays both the violin and the keyboard, performed in the local youth orchestra. She spent Saturdays at the Art Institute of Chicago. She said Glen Ellyn's proximity to a city like Chicago became a key benefit for her future career.

She also credits a teacher, Stan Yohe, for expanding her intellectual and geographical horizons.

"He exposed us to an alternate version of the world," she said. "For the first time, I began to understand there were many parts to the world besides the ones we had in Glen Ellyn."

She appreciated seeing movies at the Glen Art Theatre, built in the 1920s, and admitted it's her dream to have "Heart of a Dog" play there.

She references the movie palace in the last scene of her film, a plotless series of personal essays on life, death, Big Brother surveillance and other topics, all narrated by Anderson, with visuals supplied by animation, film clips, paintings and photos.

"Even though it's about my life, it's really about stories and what they are. How we use them. What happens when we repeat them too often, and how they relate to our own lives," she said.

How much impact did her experience making her 1986 concert movie "Home of the Brave" have on creating "Heart of a Dog"?

"Nothing," she said. "That was a concert film and we were working with the biggest technology and the coolest digital systems we could get. We were geeking out on equipment.

"'Heart of a Dog' is like five cameras and iPhones, whatever we had. It's homemade. The animation I shot, 80 percent of it. And we shot it within two blocks from my house. Mostly, it was a very hand-drawn kind of thing."

She learned one thing from "Home of the Brave."

"That I didn't want to make movies," she said. "They cost too much. They involve too many people. I didn't really enjoy it. I want to keep things small. If something giant comes along, we might deal with it.

"But it's not a goal of mine to do big, splashy things."

- Dann Gire

If you know of a suburbanite in showbiz who would make a good story, contact Dann Gire and Jamie Sotonoff at dgire@dailyherald.com and jsotonoff@dailyherald.com.

'It was a way to be free'

In her 40+ years as a performance artist, critic, composer, musician and inventor, Glenbard West graduate Laurie Anderson has been the subject of much arts criticism. Is it of any real value?

“Arts criticism can be really interesting, or it can be inane,” she said. “When people write about art or talk about it in ways that are interesting, I see that as another art form. I don't really see it as criticism.”

Anderson said that critics tend to compartmentalize the works of artists, and they take a dim view of anyone who crosses lines.

“If you're a novelist, you're not supposed to be writing TV. Critics for some reason get really riled about that.

“I became an artist because it was a way to be free. I'm not sure I need to be told to get back in my lane.”