Comments on: Hollis Sigler’s Breast Cancer Journal

By: Philip Yenawine

Philip Yenawine — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 05:18:29 +0000

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.
Rating: 5 / 5

By: Lynn Kable, Founding Board Member and Former President, Society for the Arts in Healthcare

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:53:04 +0000

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!
Rating: 5 / 5

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:28:27 +0000

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.
Rating: 5 / 5

By: I. Valdez

I. Valdez — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:20:45 +0000

I had a school assignment for reporting the life of a contemporary female artist, and while browsing through the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ website I ran into Hollis Sigler’s work. I was greatly impressed by her art and her courage. I purchased the book and it is a wonderful memorial to Sigler, who embraced her fate and empowered herself by raising awareness of this devastating disease. The vibrant images and sensitive introduction by the artist are worth the money. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 5 / 5