Hollis Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal [Hardcover]

Hollis Sigler (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1555951759 | ISBN-13: 978-1555951757 | Publication Date: October 1, 1999 | Edition: 1

The artist's pictorial journal explores her experience with breast cancer, creating paintings and works on paper. With essays by leading breast cancer authority Susan Love, art critic James Yood, and Sigler herself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A Chicago-based artist, Sigler learned in 1986 that she, like her mother and grandmother, had breast cancer. Five years later, the cancer had spread to Sigler's bones, inspiring the captivating small-scale paintings featured in this powerful book, in which she unflinchingly traces the perilous psychic journey a woman makes as she combats the disease. The pieces have an introspective yet schematic feel similar to the work of Chicago Imagist Jim Nutt. Because Sigler constructs her symmetrical paintings in bright, jewel-tone colors, they also recall the work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. (An essay by James Yood traces Sigler's career as an artist, and a brief text by Sigler describes the history of her work.) Occasionally, Sigler uses cut paper to create her domestic scenes of beds, dresses and vanities in which no one seems to be at home. In some works, the right breast has been slashed from the dresses and blood rains from the sky. Because the reproductions are relatively small, the statistics on cancer and the private thoughts the artist has inscribed on the frames of her paintings are reprinted at the bottom of each page. Readers don't have to have cancer to relate to the sentiments expressed in works like "Having to Beat the Odds"Aalthough as breast cancer specialist Dr. Susan M. Love notes in her foreword, the disease still kills 30% of its victims. 60 color plates. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Artist Sigler began this series of paintings in 1992 after her second bout with breast cancer. Sigler has now had a second recurrence, but she continues to work and to see cancer as a positive force, making each day something to look forward to and acknowledging that giving up control over something that is beyond one's control is liberating. The brightly colored, symbolic pieces feature recurring themes of loss (leafless/limbless trees), a heightened sense of personal awareness (a vanity table), and the death of her mother in 1995, also from breast cancer (a dress). Sigler often includes text in the form of statistics, journal entries, or inspirational texts (e.g., from Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals) written on the frames and mats of her paintings; these are clearly printed here for easier reading below the fine reproductions. The introduction by art critic and author Yood establishes Sigler's progression in the art world. And breast cancer advocate Susan Love's foreword acknowledges the grace and ultimate value of these works in a world where a cancer cure is not yet near enough. Those interested in cancer matters will find Sigler's texts as enlightening as they are alarming; the book will move those affected by breast cancer as well as those attracted by the art. Recommended for all libraries.ABette-Lee Fox, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Hudson Hills Press; 1 edition (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555951759
• ISBN-13: 978-1555951757
• Product Dimensions: 11.9 x 9.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,762,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Necessary Book, February 23, 2000

By 

Philip Yenawine (Wellfleet MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hollis Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal (Hardcover)

This book is a success story, not in the sense of finding a tidy, happy resolution to a difficult biography, but of illuminating both the human capacity to act bravely and forcefully and the power of art to communicate about impossibly difficult things. "On the wall of deadly silence about the disease, I aimed to hang my Breast Cancer Journal. This work was an outcry." And it still is. Breast cancer is an immense epidemic, affecting more people than AIDS, yet it gets far less attention. It is just as complicated emotionally because of the way that death shadows it and the blows it deals to the literal form of femininity. Through her quirky, poignant, personal art, Sigler depicts a universal experience of how it feels to live with disfiguring disease, with loving others while ill oneself, with ignorance, with the trauma of treatments more drastic than the disease. She deals with the loneliness of illness and with the power of art to communicate, to create community, to produce social action. This is an instructive, inspiring and truly spiritual book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hollis Sigler's Extraordinary Journal, March 4, 2000

By 

Lynn Kable, Founding Board Member and Former ... (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hollis Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal (Hardcover)

Hollis Sigler has created a visual language, easily learned and powerfully understood, using images of a woman's everyday life to portray wildly varying emotions of a woman diagnosed with re-occurring cancer. "Hollis Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal" show's Hollis' own incredible strength in living and painting life to the fullest while concurrently fighting serious illness. Her drawings and paintings reflect the experiences of women living with breast cancer and those who care for them, while providing a means of immediate, almost organic emotional understanding to their families, neighbors, and friends. Hollis is brave, powerful, and very much attached to life. Her struggles are all of ours: through her art we learn to better understand ourselves. From 1994-1997 The Society for the Arts in Healthcare (SAH) sponsored with the National Museum of Women in the Arts a national tour to 24 hospitals of replicas, donated by Polaroid Corporation, of 14 Hollis Sigler drawings and painting about living with breast cancer, all of which now appear in "Hollis Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal." Hollis' powerful images provided a vehicle for patients and families, doctors and nurses, visitors, medical students and non-professional staff to consider breast cancer from a visually articulate patient's point of view. Kathy Miller of the Cancer Wellness Center in Northbrook, IL wrote at the time about the art and Hollis Sigler: "The art is thought-provoking for people of all ages and in all stages of health....Women have a lot in common -- her work says it all." Hollis Sigler's work is important, a series of visual statements with the same emotional validity as the writings of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross or the choreography of Bill T. Jones. I have shown some of Hollis' images which appear in this book during arts-in-healthcare talks to medical students in Ohio, patients in New York, and healthcare professionals in Japan. The images have always met with visual and emotional appreciation and immediate understanding from the audience. From the standpoint of this particular reader and member of the Arts in Healthcare movement, "Hollis Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal" is a Must Read!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Work, April 14, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Hollis Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal (Paperback)

Creating art work that passes on a political message, that is spawned in part from social awareness, is almost impossible to do well. Holly was always an artist first, and the paintings and drawings in this book testify that she broke the rules to become the exception--while rendering her rage over her breast cancer she transcended it to make a thoroughly beautiful body of work.