Will You Step Into My Parlour? Nicole Hollander's Living Room

Inktart.org,

W ILL Y O U S T EP I N TO MY P AR L OU R ?

N I C O L E

H O L L A N D E R ’ S

L I V I N G

R O O M

1

© 2013 Lillstreet Art Center 4401 N. Ravenswood Ave. Chicago, IL 60640 Artwork © the artists.

Text © Nicole Hollander Photographs by Joe Tighe. Design by Jess Mott Wickstrom.

Exhibition: October 20 - November 17, 2013.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic or mechanical means, without permission in writing from Lillstreet Art Center.

W I LL Y O U ST EP I NT O M Y P A RLO U R? N I C O L E

H O L L A N D E R ’ S

L I V I N G

R O O M

4

IN JUNE 201 2 , I WAS INVITED to

known work, but to reveal and perhaps

meet Nicole Hollander in her Chicago

surprise the audience with the diversity of

home. This would be the first of many visits

her talents. Many people are familiar with

over the following year and a half in which

Nicole’s nationally syndicated comic strip,

Lillstreet and the artist worked together to

but beyond creating cartoons, she collects

select the items that comprise “Will You

and assembles a variety of two- and three-

Step Into My Parlour? Nicole Hollander’s

dimensional artwork, has a passion for

Living Room.” The exhibition transports

performance, and is the author of numerous

visitors into a curious physical space that

books and a blog which explores topics

allows for an intensely personal look at the

ranging from feminism to aging and politics

objects, themes, people, and aesthetics that

to popular culture.

influence her life and work.

Lillstreet’s exhibition program aims to inspire The title of the show, of course, comes from

and educate our visitors, and with “Will You

the 19th century fable and its illustrious

Step…” we have entered into exciting new

opening line, ‘Will you step into my parlour?’

territory. An unconventional retrospective,

said the Spider to the Fly. In the poem, a

this site-specific installation dedicated to a

cunning spider attempts to lure its prey into

Chicago treasure is the first of what I hope

its web under false pretense. Nicole came

will be many such exhibits that push the

up with the idea and I immediately loved

boundaries of our humble space.

it—it was dark, whimsical, and had a strong hint of the satire and wit that her signature

– Jess Mott Wickstrom, Gallery Director

character, Sylvia, is known for.

The appeal of bringing this project to Lillstreet, however, was not only the opportunity to celebrate the artist’s best-

The exhibition is presented in association with Chicago Artists Month and would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of Lillstreet staff and interns including: Tracey Morrison, Joe Tighe, Bart Conklin, David Valesco and Alice Vignol.

5

Light Table Diorama Nicole Hollander, 2013 6

7

The view from the couch

by Nicole Hollander

I’ve been sitting on the love seat in the tiny alcove to the right of my living room.

From my vantage point I am looking directly at the secretary that holds many of the 3-dimensional narratives that I created for this exhibition.

I suggest someone buy all the objects on that secretary and the secretary as well.

The desk’s quite beautiful, I found it at an antique shop in La Porte, Indiana at least 20 years ago… So long ago that someone who ran an antique shop was willing to drive to Chicago with the desk in the back of their van.

What’s on the top tier of the desk? A pair of book ends, two figures that look like William Shakespeare twins. Between them they hold up an assortment of Sylvia books and other titles by Nicole Hollander made over a period of 30 years.

Other narratives: 2 Shriner bobble heads, one being kissed by a Mexican figure of death. A dancing couple in a garden. It’s their last dance. Their Revenge Tango. Each character has stabbed the other with garden implement. There’s lots of blood.

8

9

They are surrounded by exotic foliage, some of it plastic (to be put in an aquarium for atmosphere), and some of it real: air plants. You should spray these everyday with a fine mist to keep them alive.

A table covered with a white drape made out of clay that was shaped and then baked. On the tabletop there’s the food we should love: vegetables and fruit.

Below (visible in the mirror), the food our unconscious longs for.

A vase full of cloth lilies. Each one contains a green plastic finger, with the nails painted dark burgundy.

10

If man’s best friend is a dog, who is woman’s? A woman is kneeling and looking into a cage in which a tiny bride is trapped along with a few grains of rice. A tiny cat keeps the woman and the bride company.

The drawers and slots in the desk are filled with miniature furniture, quite old . A few chairs, a child’s crib, a toilet, a sink and a tub.

A miniature iron bed is balanced on the base of a plant light. On top of the bed a skeleton menaces someone, me I think. It was sent by an old love at the end of our affair.

11

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

by Nicole Hollander

A friend of a friend was getting married. He had an enormous collection of interesting things, all of which his fiancé insisted he get rid of. He had a sale. He put the things that he couldn’t bear to part with in a separate room. In love or not, some things were sacred.

I bought a Frankenstein figure. Thinking about the Bride of Frankenstein, I decided to make him both bride and groom. I made him a veil covered in roses. Then, of course, I had to have a wedding cake. I went to Dinkel’s and picked out a cake, from the cake book and asked that it be made in plaster. The owner (not the original owner, but his son) said: “I am only doing this for you because I have a daughter who’s an artist, otherwise, I would have just sent you on your way.” I painted the cake and the swans.

The cakes in the window at Dinkel’s are now butter cream. When they become old and disgusting, they are replaced by fresh cakes.

The cake comes with a small chest of drawers in place of a pedestal. The drawers are big enough for some trousseau items: handkerchiefs, pillow cases, old wedding invitations, some rice and of course a slice of petrified wedding cake.

12

13

Cats and Carpets

by Nicole Hollander

Cats like carpets, all the more reason to eschew carpeting in a home that has cats.

They like to get down with a rug. They scratch, they roll, they occasionally vomit.

Cats have boundary issues. Nothing is yours… everything they see, is theirs.

So when Sharon decided to buy me a beautiful purple carpet for my birthday, she also decided not to tell me about it. There I was glowing with delight at my birthday party that featured a cake that was the pinnacle of every little girl’s idea of the perfect cake….covered with frosting flowers, no actual cake visible, just frosting flowers. And Sharon comes into the room with a carpet under her arm.

She found it at a resale shop. Yes, it was a great find. Perhaps the find of a lifetime.

A field of flowers against a gorgeous purple background. It costs her $100 to clean it. It would have been churlish of me to scream until I was red in the face: “I don’t want a carpet. I need a carpet like I need a pony!!”

Sharon and John offered to bring the carpet to my apartment (John is often present when offers like this are made. That is because he is married to Sharon. He

14

looks bewildered as if this offer is a bolt out of the blue, because it is). They would move whatever was necessary to accommodate said carpet. They moved pretty much everything, which is why my apartment looks totally different from the original images taken for this exhibit.

15

NEVER TELL YOUR MOTHER THIS DREAM #2: NO, I’M SORRY, OFFICER, I DON’T KNOW WHERE MY FATHER IS

by Nicole Hollander

Perhaps you woke up this morning with the word “memoir” written in black crayon on a piece of orange origami paper stuck to your forehead. Or maybe, like me, you write and draw and you are out of work and you notice that people are deep into memoir writing and that every other book is a graphic novel, so you think, “I will make up a syllabus and I will teach something popular for a change.” Then, after teaching for a while, you think: “What the hell, I had a stressful childhood. I will write a graphic memoir” and then you remember that you really don’t like the form. Oh, my, an impure thought. I hope no one heard me. Upon rereading this I realize that my aim in writing it was to sound tough and like someone who makes rational choices based on taking advantage of the latest trends.

I left out the part where I was knocked back on my heels the first time I opened Rutu Modan’s Exit Wounds and realized that the images and story in her work were more than the sum of their parts.

16

Here’s why I can’t get my mind around the graphic memoir–I went to art school in painting for a long time, maybe too long. My two favorite periods in art are Medieval anything and German Expressionism. I am in love with expressive line. I’m not so into perspective.

The drawing used in graphic novels is too reminiscent of comic books for me. The art is tightly drawn, using the devices used in movies: the long shot, the close up, and story boarding. Most graphic artists I talk to draw their images over and over, gaining accuracy and losing immediacy.

I love stories. I would rather write stories than draw. So, I have a problem with creating a graphic memoir.

Anyway, 2 years ago I’m waiting for an elevator in the corridor outside the offices of the MFA writing program and the hairs on the back of my neck rise and so I look

17

behind me to see an extraordinary piece of art. It’s drawn in charcoal on beautiful paper, narrow sheets about 16 inches deep, but about seven feet long. It’s a city. I know that, even though the buildings are more like pyramids. The shapes suggest a city, but they are not real buildings. They are “outsider art!”

I immediately visit the art supply store downstairs and am directed (actually, commanded. The student waiting on me tells me I can’t use any other paper except the one he picked out) to the absolutely most beautiful paper to draw on in charcoal and it comes in rolls, so it can be cut in long narrow strips.

The second thing I do is apply to Ragdale in Lake Forest for an artist residency to work on my memoir. I get it! I haven’t been at a residency in 15 years. I arrive. I look around at the extraordinarily beautiful room (the Sylvia Studio, coincidentally), with just enough paint on the floors and furniture to make me comfortable, and there is an old boom box on the table with two stations marked on the dial with white out. They are my favorite stations… that bodes well. I staple my paper up 18

on the walls in an unbelievably high-ceilinged room with a view of the prairie and start to draw.

I drew in a way I had never drawn before, very directly, without stopping. If I had second thoughts I drew a line through the first draft and kept on going.

It’s the story of my life from age 7 to 14, when I lived at 3914 W. Congress Street (in Chicago), before the building of the Congress Expressway changed our neighborhood beyond recognition. I used Google maps to locate my building. It looks exactly as it looked when I was a child.

I enlarged the map image and amazingly enough, on the street in front of the house, there was an empty parking space. I drew my father’s blue Hudson and placed it in that spot (he would have been pleased to find a spot right in front of the house) and I began to recreate my childhood.

19

MARIE ANTOINETTE

by Nicole Hollander

My interest in Marie Antoinette cannot be redeemed, nor made serious. I am interested in the surface, her iconic qualities. I love the hair, the clothes, and the idea of the Hamlet where Marie went to experience nature.

I imagine her finding a pimple on her nose and sending many people to their deaths in a fit of pique. I see her revealing a nipple, covered with sequins way before Janet Jackson’s debacle. I have read of her brother, Joseph, defending her against the calumny that she is famous for. He insists she never said: “Let them eat cake!” It was some other insensitive royal.

I have collected a number of Marie Antoinette dolls, the ones that cause her head to topple at the press of a button. They don’t make those dolls anymore; children had a tendency to swallow the heads. With Preston’s (a young artist from the School of Art Institute who helped me put together sculptures for this exhibition) help, I remade her dress and redesigned her hair. It was Preston who noticed that her plastic costume was removable. I expressed amazement. I hadn’t noticed. He replied gently: “I am a guy, I noticed.”

20

I want to thank Avram Eisen for the wonderful inventive frames he created for Marie, and Camille Canales for printing my drawings on cloth and her help in finding fabric for the Queen’s outfits and sewing them on. She tried to teach me embroidery.

I am responsible for the embroidery: pimple, nipple and lips. All faults are mine.

21

Wicker Chair, Wicker Settee, coffee table

Ladies’Boudoir Chair This chair was

The wicker chair, the

originally for a ladies’

wicker settee and

boudoir. Sally Cookie

the ladies’ boudoir

ruined it. I don’t want

chair sit on the

to go into details, but

carpet in the alcove in my living room.

I had it reupholstered and covered in

The coffee table I bought at a house

leather (I can’t swear it’s leather).

sale in Michigan City, Indiana. No, the furniture is not for sale. I have to have

carved Lamp

some place to sit. While the show is on,

Lamp carved from

I’ve just been leaning against the wall or

3 pieces of wood

going to sleep early.

by my paternal grandfather.

He came from London with my grandmother. My father was born in Oelwein, Iowa. Did my Grandfather work for Pullman in Oelwein or a town nearby? I don’t know. Very small town: Oelwein. I knew a photographer who was born there and she refused to believe that my grandfather, a Jew, would have

Handmade Quilt

lived in Oelwein.

Quilt made by fan of my blog, Bad Girl Chats. I have never met her. She selected

Standing Lamp

cat cartoons from an old datebook, made

Vintage find. I had the

a patchwork quilt of breathtaking beauty,

lampshade made.

and then she gave it to me. A labor of love. The best gift I have ever received.

22

Bird Lamp

Light Table Diorama This lamp is not for

Nicole Hollander, 2013

sale because my

Cowboys, Indians

sister wants me to

and cattle. Who

leave it to her. My

could ask for more?

sister is a minimalist.

Wait, there’s more. You can turn on the

Every time she moves, which is often, she

light and there’s room for your morning

brings me a too large item for my house

coffee.

and I am obligated to take it! Lamp signed: Crag Carey.

Ottoman

19th Century Mannequin, Young boy’s Form, French

Purchased from Robin

Made as part of a living room set for

Richman whose

the public art exhibition “Sweet Home

marvelous store is

Chicago”. I designed a suite for this project:

located on Damen

a couch, a television set and a chair and

and Shakespeare.

ottoman. A woman who owned a furniture

The mannequin is

store in Milwaukee purchased the set.

mysterious and wonderful and showing

I was bereft. Kinc, the company that

signs of its great age.

painted the furniture from my designs, made an extra ottoman just for me.

Wooden House Nicole Hollander, ‘90s

Wooden House with rubber figure of motorcycle cop made by me. Something terrible happened in this house…

23

Memorabilia Robe, cast/crew photo, framed advertisment

From “Sylvia’s Real Good Advice,” which first opened at Pegasus Theater in 1991 and then at Organic Theater in Chicago. The

Two Chairs, Birdhouse

robe was made by the costume designer

Ted Frankel (a.k.a. Uncle Fun), 1997

from my chenille bedspread, purchased

Covered in carefully assembled paint-

at a vintage store and worn by the actress

by-number canvas from his extensive

Carole Gutierrez, playing Sylvia in the

collection. Birdhouse on top of chair also

musical. The cleverness of the designer

made by Ted.

shows in the way she made use of the peacock image in the robe. The robe is short in front and the peacock image forms a kind of train behind the actress.

Animal Cage, with nests

Initials “N.H” The Galaxy, a place

Nicole Hollander, ‘90’s

for dance and music

Long ago when Robin Richman was

and art was the solo creation of Nicolle

located in Indiana, I found this cage

Wood. When it had to shut down, she

at her shop. I saved it for a long time

gave me a pair of my initials that she had

and then I found 3 birds nests in the

found in the alley. She said: “I have your

basement of her Chicago shop and put

initials. Would you like them?” I pictured

them together. I hung them high over my

them much smaller! If these should

staircase under a light and the shadows

happen to be your initials you may

are wonderful. You have to have the right

purchase them. If your first name begins

spot for it.

with an “H” that will work too.

24

Chinese chest with Sculpture

Marie Antoinette

Nicole Hollander, 2013

Drawing

This is a gift from

Nicole Hollander, 2013

my sister. I did covet

This is a drawing of Joseph

it. A tiny red chest,

II, the elder brother of

the style is Chinese.

Marie. He spent his life

On top is an art deco

insisting that Marie did not

lamp and a plaster cake that I made

say: “Let them eat cake!” I believe him. Nice

when I took a cake decorating class

old frame that I found in my basement.

in Berkeley. I thought I would spend my artistic life making plaster cakes,

Tray, tarts and stand

but it turns out the plaster ruins your

Nicole Hollander, 2013

plumbing. Imagine it hardening in the

Marie Antoinette is having her toenails

pipes! There are several vintage brides

painted. She’s surrounded by luscious

and grooms on the top of the chest, with

cakes and tarts. What an image! I wanted

a minister to marry them.

to create a shrine for Marie made of tarts.

My tarts look mouthwatering and luscious

You’re Having My Baby

but they are inedible, formed by using old

Nicole Hollander, 200l

barrettes, doll house figures, and plastic

Cage with Chinese

fruit. I made whipped cream using white

toy duck made from

tile grout and lots of glitter. A few friends

fabric. Miniature doll

came over to

has her hands on her baby, which is a real

make tarts and

egg painted black. She sits on a wooden

when they were

couch on a bed of straw. This song by

done I made

Paul Anka raised women’s eyebrows in

many more.

the 70’s because the male singer seemed

Thank you Allison,

to be saying he was having his baby with

Paul, Preston and

no input from the mother.

Galen.

25

Cowboy Girl with Snake

Stephen Wade Anderson, 2003

Painting Stephan Wade Anderson, 2003

Illustrator’s Portrait of Himself,

Another actress from a 60’s horror film. This one was the actor Rory Calhoun’s wife, starring as the owner

Sylvia and Nicole at Nicole’s 60th Birthday in New York at the

of a ranch that has a plague of scorpions.

Gramercy Cafe

That dark shape coming out of the

The illustrator is Richard Merkin,

mountains is not ash, but insects.

Sylvia’s birthdate is unknown. All we know is that she was and remains about

Haitian Flag Anonymous

10 years older than Nicole. The Sylvia Cartoon strip began in January of 1980.

From Haiti.

Haitian Flag of

Women on the Beach

twin sisters and

Suzanne Peters, 1960

one bother;

Suzy and I were

the combination guaranteed to drive a

undergraduates in art

mother mad.

school (University of Illinois, Urbana-

Happy Mother’s Day Heather McAdams, ‘90’s

Champaign) together.

We met on the first day in the basement having coffee on the bench. This was my favorite painting of hers. Woman on the Beach.

26

Still Life

The Saga of Sally Cookie in Photos

Nicole Hollander, 1960

Nicole Hollander, ‘90’s

Still life I painted

When Sally Cookie, my favorite of all the

in my senior

cats I’ve ever had, began to destroy my

year at University of Illinois, Urbana-

furniture, I tried ways of distracting her.

Champaign. I still like it.

I tried slipcovers, covering the couches with stuff, nothing deterred her from her

Portrait of Nicole at age 17 Billy Jackson, 1956

mission of destruction. I had to re-cover everything in faux leather.

Billy liked to have young art students pose for him. He fancied all of us.

I’m sure he was occasionally successful. Hard to know.

No one spoke of it.

The Good Times are Killing Me Lynda Barry, 1989

Sylvia Painting

Poster from

Nicole Hollander, 1984

Lynda Barry’s

Painted cell from the animation for

theater

“Women’s Voices: The Gender Gap”

production, “The

movie. Frame

Good Times

covered with

are Killing Me”.

black and

With drawing of

white comic

me and illustrations around the interior by

strips.

Lynda Barry.

27

28