Kathleen Lolley - "Z" Artist

Started by cmccubbin@work, Sep 20, 2007, 12:15 PM

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cmccubbin@work

Sep 20, 2007, 12:15 PM
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"When I was a kid I just daydreamed," artist Kathleen Lolley said. "I never really stopped doing that."

On a recent evening in her studio, Lolley's signature strange and childlike creatures -- birds, rabbits and owls -- are slowly coming to life in half-finished pieces on the tables.

Lolley's humble workspace in the back of the pop-culture, art and craft store Kopilot, which is owned by a friend and sells her work, isn't yet showing signs of the new art-world attention the 29-year-old artist is getting worldwide.

There have been high-profile exhibits in New York and Los Angeles, appearances in Elle and Japanese Vogue, and in the hipster boutique Urban Outfitters, which asked her to be part of its wall art series. Lolley did the art for My Morning Jacket's album "Z." And next month, her work will be showcased in a solo show at the super-cool Giant Robot Gallery in New York.

"It's a new thing where people all of a sudden are interested in my work," Lolley said.

She's not yet quite comfortable with that fact. Her art has always been a deeply personal, private pursuit, full of repeating symbols and characters that emerge from a rich and complex imagination -- one that mixes contemporary references and vintage finishes, creates mythological complexity from simple parts, and throws impenetrable, childlike animal characters into the upheavals of adult life. Lolley talks of her "little creatures that are witty and are not always good and are always playing tricks on each other."

The result is work that is both instantly likeable and intriguingly mysterious -- a combination that's serving her well as she begins to earn both critical praise and commercial success.

Lolley's art "has a then-and-now kind of feel," said Eric Nakamura, publisher of the Asian pop culture and art magazine, Giant Robot, and owner of the Giant Robot galleries. "Some of it looks like it could be a book cover from the '50s or '60s; at the same time, it seems very Space Age. ... It has multiple levels for different people," he said.

"You can enjoy it right away, but then you can go, 'What's going on in it?' It's intriguing. ... A little kid might like it, or you can have a serious art critic" respond to it, too, he said. "That's really hard to achieve."

A macabre sense of humor


Lolley's upbringing seems like exactly the sort that might produce such a blending of the cute and the nefarious, a fascination with the future and an appreciation of the ornate, the folkloric, the historical.

"My parents had a macabre sense of humor," she said. Her father, David Lolley, is a cardiovascular surgeon, and "introduced me to all these weird, dark films," like the Monty Python movies and "Time Bandits," Lolley said. David Lolley also enjoyed educating his daughter using quotes from the cartoon series, The Simpsons.

"He called me 'little Lisa' all the time," and he would say things like, " 'Just because I understand doesn't mean I care,' " said Lolley. "He had a weird way of teaching me about the world."

Lolley's mother, Bonnie Thompson, made crafts -- everything from folk paintings to German wax art to teddy bears -- and "I was her little helper elf."

Other gleanings about Lolley's childhood that might have influenced her work: her grandparents' tobacco farm in Shelbyville, her grandfather's glass eye, the Looney Tunes cartoon series, "The Dark Crystal" (Jim Henson's Muppet masterpiece film for adults), Muppets generally, and growing up "surrounded by nature" in Kentucky.

And this: "I lived in my grandparents' attic for awhile," said Lolley. "That might be where the darker stuff comes from."

Life in Lolleyland


Post-childhood, Lolley earned a B.F.A. in experimental animation from the California Institute for the Arts and attended the media arts program at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Her plan was to work in animation -- she loved the idea of telling full stories with her characters -- but after working in Hollywood on commercial projects like the kids' cartoon series, "SpongeBob SquarePants" and ads for Dean's Milk and Disney products, "I just felt like a cog in the wheel." Lolley returned to Louisville to focus on her own artwork.

It seemed to be the right move for an artist who comes out of the comic book world and draws on a childhood love of cartoons, but also counts among her influences the 15th century painter Hieronymus Bosch, whose symbolic portrayals of the chaos of human sin inspired 20th century surrealists like Salvador Dali.

"I usually blend what I'm experiencing with my imaginary world," Lolley said. "It just happens very organically." Her work draws on the mythology and imagery of childhood, but speaks to adult viewers with its mature, often melancholy subject matter. Demons in the form of horned, bat-like winged creatures hover over their prey, the rabbits and birds and people that populate Lolleyland, the name of Lolley's website and the title one might give to the fantastical world her work continually explores.

"I have all these characters in my mind and I throw them into different situations," she said. She often turns to animal characters because "when you're young you kind of connect with animals," she said. "The wolf is the drunk, the owl is the wise one, the deer is evasive," she said. The icons help Lolley illustrate the stories she imagines and give the viewer a rich backdrop for his or her own narrative imaginings.

"It has a definite mythology type of feel to it," said Nakamura, who bought one of Lolley's pieces for his living room. "It's intriguing; when you look at a picture you're wondering, 'What's going on in there? What does this mean?' Part of it's the story you make up, and part of it is what's really there, what she intended -- it can have different meanings," he said.

Other gallery owners are beginning to share Nakamura's fascination for Lolley's art. After the Giant Robot exhibition, Lolley will get to work on a 2008 show that will take her in a new direction -- three dimensions. Lolley has been creating small wooden figures that embody her characters like precious, mysterious little idols. A representative of Thinkspace Gallery in Los Angeles saw one and asked Lolley to create much larger versions for a show that will turn the gallery into a life-size Lolleyland.

As for what her mischievous, charming and sometimes sinister little critters will do next, Lolley said she likes the idea of "playing off the idea of history and current events." Accordingly, unrest is brewing in Lolleyland; the artist projects a civil or gang war might erupt in her paintings and delicate pen-and-ink drawings.

For Lolley, the future is much brighter. In addition to her upcoming gallery shows, she is at work with writer Brian Weinberg on what must be a very unusual book for children -- a nourishing tale for the elves who squat in their grandparents' attics, orchestrating wars among their toys, full of wonder and hope, and watched over by their grandfather's glass eye.


-- Joanna Richards

If you're lucky, MMJ will fill the void you didn't even know you ever had. If you're luckier, you'll get to see them live.

Angry Ewok

#2
Sep 20, 2007, 01:03 PM
I love her work... managed to get 1/50 of one of her prints, a while back, still pretty proud of that.
--- and that's 2 real 4 u.

BH

#3
Sep 20, 2007, 03:09 PM
I'm digging, digging deep in myself, but who needs a shovel when you have a little boy like mine.

Angry Ewok

#4
Sep 20, 2007, 04:25 PM
Good taste, Sean... I've got the top right one and bought the bottom left one, back in the day, as well.
--- and that's 2 real 4 u.

ManNamedTruth

#5
Sep 20, 2007, 09:18 PM
I don't believe i've seen The Dark Crystal before, will put on my to see list.
That's motherfuckin' John Oates!

dragonboy

#6
Sep 20, 2007, 10:18 PM
QuoteI don't believe i've seen The Dark Crystal before, will put on my to see list.
Loved that when I was younger!

Cool pic TK!  :)
God will forgive them. He'll forgive them and allow them into Heaven.....I can't live with that.

aMD

#7
Sep 20, 2007, 10:41 PM
i'm going to have to pick up some more lolley before she's out of my price range!

Angry Ewok

#8
Sep 21, 2007, 01:26 AM
QuoteI don't believe i've seen The Dark Crystal before, will put on my to see list.

Also check out The Labyrinth (Jim Henson + David Bowie is a GOOD thing), and the NeverEnding Story, as well. Great 80's fantasy material...
--- and that's 2 real 4 u.

sweatboard

#9
Sep 21, 2007, 01:35 AM
There's Still Time.........

ManNamedTruth

#10
Sep 21, 2007, 03:30 PM
i've seen
Quote
QuoteI don't believe i've seen The Dark Crystal before, will put on my to see list.

Also check out The Labyrinth (Jim Henson + David Bowie is a GOOD thing), and the NeverEnding Story, as well. Great 80's fantasy material...
i have seen both, haven't seen never ending story since i was a kid though.
That's motherfuckin' John Oates!

fitzcarraldo

#11
Sep 23, 2007, 05:18 PM
Quote
QuoteThanks 4 posting. Yeah, her art's really awesome. Just ordered this from Urban Outfitters: (Damn, that is one big link) Pretty great deal :)


http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&_dynSessConf=-6101842620297270953&itemdescription=true&itemCount=8&id=13588140&parentid=A_FURN_WALL&sortProperties=%2Bproduct.marketingPriority%2C-product.startDate&navCount=11&_D%3AnavCount=+&navAction=poppush&color=49&_DARGS=%2Furban%2Fcatalog%2Fcommon%2Fitemlink.jsp


Nice!  Four Lolley's and Maceo all in one pic!

That you Hermo? ;) Actually that ones Chloe. :)

BH

#12
Sep 23, 2007, 09:59 PM
Quote

That you Hermo? ;) Actually that ones Chloe. :)


Ah yes, I forgot about Chloe!  
I'm digging, digging deep in myself, but who needs a shovel when you have a little boy like mine.

LizKing531

#13
Sep 27, 2007, 11:20 AM
Quotei'm going to have to pick up some more lolley before she's out of my price range!

Definitely do it now - it wont be long - she's been getting a bunch of press from the NY art crowd I've been hearing.  

On a similar note:

Saw Gary Baseman present his work last week - it was friggin awesome!  But his paintings are now selling in the 10s of thousands - his most recent sale went for something like $25,000.  Very similar to Lolly - strange surreal worlds of oddly dark characters - first glance is kinda childlike (little gnomes, funny characters), second glance makes me feel kinda dirty

www.garybaseman.com

TEO

#14
Sep 27, 2007, 07:23 PM
I have probably always been a little more conservative in my appreciation of Art than anything else I engage in. I LOVE her work. Quirky, understated, yet easily appreciated by me. I want it all!
"You are only as young as the last time you changed your mind" T. Leary

ManNamedTruth

#15
Sep 27, 2007, 07:52 PM
Quote
Quotei'm going to have to pick up some more lolley before she's out of my price range!

Definitely do it now - it wont be long - she's been getting a bunch of press from the NY art crowd I've been hearing.  

On a similar note:

Saw Gary Baseman present his work last week - it was friggin awesome!  But his paintings are now selling in the 10s of thousands - his most recent sale went for something like $25,000.  Very similar to Lolly - strange surreal worlds of oddly dark characters - first glance is kinda childlike (little gnomes, funny characters), second glance makes me feel kinda dirty

www.garybaseman.com

yeah thats fucked up.
That's motherfuckin' John Oates!

fitzcarraldo

#16
Oct 25, 2007, 02:53 PM
Kathleen Lolley's show "Forsake the Prey" that opened Saturday @ Giant Robot in NYC is online now. There are some works left for sale. Got to see it in person over the weekend, super cool.

http://www.grny.net/artshow.php?catid=R026&page=1

Kory

#17
Oct 25, 2007, 10:37 PM
awesome you got to see that sean! I have been watching the site and saw they put them up for sale and they're almost sold out. I wish I could afford an original.
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