How do art exhibits come together? Sometimes over a long period as a gallery watches an artist mature, or collects works from a particular genre or period, but sometimes spontaneously with an out-of-the-blue spark. A little bit of both inspired the exhibit, “A Game of Chance,” which opens Nov. 21 at the Printworks gallery in the River North neighborhood.
Ten years ago, co-owner Sidney Block came across a deck of playing cards in a London art gallery.
“My partner Bob (Hiebert) had said that it would be nice to have 54 American artists design their own playing card or joker, something that would be creative and different. But we never pursued the idea.”
A year ago, the men decided, without quite knowing why, that it was an opportune time. But instead of simply staging another exhibit, the partners decided the show should support a charitable cause. And they knew they had the perfect colleague to help–an artist they represented, Chicagoan Hollis Sigler. Sigler concurred.
“Getting cancer is the same as a game of chance. It’s non-discriminatory. Who gets it or doesn’t is chance–which is why the idea of playing cards is an appropriate organizing theme,” said Sigler, 49, who received a bad hand when it came to her health.
Known nationally for her feminist faux-naif (affectedly naive) style, she became better known for her bold fight against breast cancer when she exhibited her “Breast Cancer Journal: Walking with the Ghosts of My Grandmothers,” a series of paintings shown at Rockford College in the spring of 1993. Diagnosed with breast cancer eight years earlier, Sigler had gone through chemotherapy and radiation, only to find the cancer had metastasized into her bones.
She is hardly alone. More than 1.6 million women have been diagnosed with breast cancer and 44,000 women in the U.S. are projected to die of breast cancer this year.
Sigler decided she would design the back of the cards with one motif, plus the Nine of Diamonds, and would ask male and female artists throughout the country to randomly pick other cards. The artists she approached represented a mixed sampling. She approached some friends–some who had had cancer or had a relative who did, and some others she did not know but whose art she felt reflected a special sensitivity or an appropriate healing motif.
The finished results, all on 18-by-13 1/2-inch paper, are a tribute to Sigler and to the Y-Me organization she selected as beneficiary. Y-Me will receive monies from the original artworks sold and the decks of playing cards that were produced with the artistic images.
“Y-Me is a national organization headquartered in Chicago that helps women and their families face breast cancer,” Sigler said. “I’m also a member, so it seemed the right choice.”
Using a variety of media–drawing, watercolor, egg tempera, collage, mixed-media and cut paper, the artists executed creative designs that incorporate the breast or other female anatomy subtly and boldly and convey a range of emotions, from fear to isolation, pain, hopelessness and hope.
“I was so surprised at the artists’ responses; they gave it so much thought and were so clever in how they portrayed the card,” Sigler said. “April Gornik’s Ace of Hearts became a waterfall and landscape that merged to form a heart.”
For some of those participating, the works became a personal remembrance. Deborah Barrett, an untrained artist in Berkeley, Calif., whose artwork generally reflects her gaining a sense of self without losing her childhood sense of wonder, recalled her own battle with cancer in her Three of Clubs. Using old linen maps and journals written by women at the turn of the century, Barrett placed a female figure at center and made the clubs resemble a configuration of cells.
“I’m sure I was thinking about the pathology reports I had to deal with when I had cancer,” says Barrett, whose cancer was discovered at an early stage. She says she was lucky to have had only a lumpectomy.
Fred Stonehouse says that his family was also luckier than many. His grandmother survived for many years after her breast cancer and died in her 80s of heart disease. His mother’s lymphoma is now in remission, seven years after being discovered. He made reference to the illnesses and the struggles they evoked in his collage of a Queen of Clubs.
“When you have relatives who have had cancer, you develop your own mythologies about why it occurred. My mother dyed her hair, and there was some suspicion that a connection existed between lymphoma and hair dye, so I wanted to make some reference to the hair in the work,” he says.
He pictured a serpent queen to raise the issue of how society deals with femininity and its problems. “I tried to give her a dual sexuality. A serpent is usually associated with men, and I tried to make her look warlike by holding a weapon with a club at the end, but she also has a big 1950s feminine hairdo. Women are angry because not enough dollars are spent on breast cancer research but also because some manufacturers may be negligent in the products they continue to make,” Stonehouse said.
Using mixed-media, Lynn Zetzman of Appleton, Wis., fashioned a menacing-looking King of Clubs with an ancient-looking club. In front of the King she placed a woman in a tiny cage. The cage symbolizes the terror women feel when they cannot escape the nightmare of breast cancer.
“Although the King might be a desirable card to hold, in this case it may be a hot potato, which you’d like to get rid of,” Zetzman wrote in her artist statement.
Audrey Niffenegger also pictured terror and loss in her Five of Spades card through St. Agatha, a Christian martyr.
“Soldiers are said to have cut off her breasts, and she is often pictured in early paintings holding her breasts on a plate,” said Niffenegger, an Evanston resident.
In her color pencil work, Niffenegger deliberately erased the breasts so ferociously that she created two large gaping holes in the paper, replacing them with two enormous soulful eyes.
“I was trying to get at the emotion that women who’ve had mastectomies are bereft that such a large portion has been taken away.”
Not all the artworks reveal dismay. Glenview artist Margaret Wharton’s King of Diamonds is a zany collage of bright red recognizable symbols–Burger King labels and Diamond matchbox covers–that together resemble the outside of a Cracker Jack box. Like a deck of cards, the Cracker Jack box and its surprise gift serve as a metaphor for the game of life. Choices sometimes turn out good, other times bad. The green crown at center links the two symbols and should be read as a “flame-broiled king,” says Wharton.
Despite her own 12-year fight to overcome cancer, Sigler’s card designs exude more hope than surrender. The back-of-the-card design shows a cut-paper, old-fashioned-style woman who seems to celebrate. Her Nine of Diamonds card reflects her belief in medical breakthroughs. Diamonds break through the landscape and light. The trees at first look barren; look again and see tiny green leaves in the blue spaces.
“Yes, the trees are returning to life; they’re not losing their leaves,” Sigler explains, her voice confident and convincing.
After the exhibit closes Jan. 31, it will travel to the Susan Cummins Gallery in Mill Valley, Calif. Though the exhibit is still to open, half the original artworks have been purchased, each for $1,500. Ten thousand copies of the decks have been printed and are available for $20 apiece at Printworks, several other art galleries, museum stores and hospital gift shops; 1,000 signed and limited editions are available for $75 each. Printworks, located at 311 W. Superior St., is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For information, call 312-664-9407.
