LuLu LoLo

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo: I see Art (with capital a) as the institutionalized manifestation of creativity. One analogy I thought as I pondered about this was that between religion and spirituality — art and creativity. More and more, I see myself as a creative being working in the day-to-day. Would you be up for talking about baking, blessings and being?

LuLu LoLo: I have always lived a creative life from day to day. My artistic practice is rooted in the traditions of my Italian American mother and my Italian immigrant grandmothers. Watching my grandmothers make macaroni by hand was my introduction to sculpture. My mother’s beautiful arrangement of the colors and textures of food on the bountiful platters that were served on the hand-crochet tablecloth inspired me artistically.  My grandmother’s religious bedroom altars and the spectacle of the religious processions in East Harlem inspired my early work adorning myself with large sculptural headpieces. Celebrating holidays was always an explosion of creative expression from baking, to decorating, to greeting cards, not only at home but at work. When I was working in the MFA Fine Arts program at the School of Visual Arts, I would decorate my small office for holidays with colorful theme decorations just as I did at home. I also made chocolates in the shapes of Valentine hearts or Halloween skulls, and holiday postcards giving them to all the students, faculty, and building staff.  The baking of cookies is very meditative to me and I can bake hundreds. People often say my cookies taste the best—and even if I share the recipe it doesn’t seem to come out the same. I just put my love into baking the cookies. My neighbors and local store owners would also receive gifts of cookies and chocolates. When my oldest son, Alex, started coaching basketball teams, I would bake chocolate chip cookies for his teams and, as the years went on, it evolved to the players in college, and even to professional teams. I would deliver sometimes as many as 600 cookies to Madison Square Garden, giving them to the players on both teams, to people who worked there, and people in the stands. Years later when I saw some of the players, they told me how much my cookies meant to them as they were away from home. With Nicolás Dumit Estévez and, assisted by Bibi Flores, in 2014 at El Museo del Barrio, New York, I once again baked chocolate chip cookies for Office Hours: Cookie Break Action and created a moment of sharing for the workers at El Museo del Barrio. In the spirit of the traditions of my mother and my grandmothers my art has grown and continues in the spirit of sharing.

NDERE: I have written in the past about the hierarchy of blessing. Those who bless hold more power than the one being blessed. But maybe not, if we consider the power imbued in conscious surrendering to the good being bestowed upon one. Recently, I have been inviting people to bless events and situations. Tell me more about your blessing engagements.

LL: For Art in Odd Places: AiOP 2017:SENSE on 14th Street in New York City, and AiOP 2018:MATTER  at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, as Mother Cabrini, Saint of the Immigrants, I offered blessings and compassion to passersby and highlighted the plight of immigrants in the United States. People would stop and I would listen to their problems and our encounters would often end with me giving them a hug. Someone watching said, "I loved seeing the way people changed as they were getting their blessings from you. You could see their posture change and something come over them." In AiOP 2018:BODY again I was offering compassion—to older people—blessing their elderly existence, focusing on the fragility of their aging bodies by walking while wearing a chair offering A Seat for the Elderly: The Invisible Generation.  In many ways all of my performances have aspects of blessing. In AiOP2011:RITUAL as The Gentleman of 14th Street, the flâneur gentleman respectfully acknowledged passersby with a tip of his top hat, blessing their day. In AiOP 2015:RECALL , as Joan of Arc, in Where are the Women? highlighting the lack of  monuments to women in New York City, asking the public to nominate women for a monument—I was really asking them to give their blessings to these women. In many ways I have been blessed in return by the interactions of people with my performances when as Loretta the Telephone Operator for Remembrances of Phone Numbers Past, AiOP 2013:NUMBER, a man dialed the phone number of his father who had passed away and spoke with him as if he were still alive, afterwards he said to me, “That was really cathartic.”  As the 14th Street NewsBoy for AiOP 2009: SIGN , offering a newspaper about the history of 14th Street— blessings came to me from the public’s response, interest and joy.  A year after the first performance, for a weekend event I was again the NewsBoy, and a young man excitedly approached me saying he treasured his first issue but never got the other three issues. I happily gave him his missing issues. I truly am the one blessed.

NDERE: Can you talk about the before and after for you in regards to your performance work? The middle seems to be what most of us experience. Would you give us some details of the other two sides?

LL: I have often said to people that the actual performance is the smallest part of the process. To create the various personas of my performances I research extensively the historical background of their characters. The costumes I wear have many detailed considerations: historical, accessible movement, lightness of weight, the ability to add or remove layers in terms of the weather, and my being able to change quickly in public on the street. Often I need special props for the performance that have to be created or located.  When performing on the street I need to determine the best location for people to interact with me without blocking the sidewalk or a business and the best time of day. In planning I will often stand in a space to determine if that location will work. I always give a gift to the audience, usually a postcard or a small trinket or even candy—these have to be designed and planned. The giving of a gift is an essential part of enacting with the public during my performances. I also have to prepare the press release, post on social media, and find assistants who will help me the day of the performance, and a photographer and a videographer. After the performance, all of these thoughts immediately come into my mind. I analyze what worked. What went wrong? What could have been better? Were there costume problems? Problems with the props? Were the interactions with people successful? Did I touch someone deeply? Did I make someone laugh? Did that person feel better or happier with the exchange? Was that the best location? The best time of day? Do I need to change anything?  Was the performance captured successfully on film or video?  Even though I am going through this checklist, I am always exhilarated by my performance and my connection with people.

NDERE: I read somewhere a person referring to the Coronavirus as a teacher. This is a hard pill to swallow, but one that encapsulates some truths. How are your days at home on a 28th floor? 

LL: Everything we encounter in life teaches us something. Illness as always is a great teacher. Coronavirus is teaching us to take a Pause to acknowledge each other in another manner than in person. To speak on the telephone, write letters, and yes even Zoom.  To maybe take a different path than we were taking. All of my artistic commitments were cancelled. I was on Pandemic Pause for 113 straight days. In the beginning I thought, since I am locked in my apartment/studio, I would spend the time archiving my work and developing new performances. But instead I spent most of my time gazing out of the six large windows on the 28th floor of the Actors Fund Housing that faces East, West and South intersecting with 57th Street and Tenth Avenue. I started to become aware of life unfolding on the rooftops around me. In my practice I am often chronicling historical events and people’s lives. Without any predetermination I began to chronicle the life around me by taking photos from my windows (over 200 photos to date) capturing the images of how other New Yorkers were coping with their confinement by migrating to their rooftops #viewfromthe28floor (picnics, exercising, bike repair, meditation, reading, working, ping pong playing, putting a golf ball, sunbathing, etc.) It has become a bit like Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rear Window. I am now the viewer of the performances of people on their rooftops. I also noted the passage of time (like a person in prison) by marking each day of my confinement with a black marker on a calendar taped to the back of the door of our apartment. I highlighted with black squares the progression of supposed End of Pause dates: April 15, April 29, May 15, May 28, June 7… During this time—I found another path that was unforeseen by me—my observations from my window of how my New York neighbors challenged themselves and adapted to this New Normal. 

NDERE: Have you dealt with any illnesses or a similar situation that you would refer to as a teacher? If so, what have you been learning from it?

LL: At a turning point in my life in 1989 when I was devoting myself to my art, I was diagnosed with cervical cancer and had to undergo major surgery and thirty days of radiation. I questioned why at this point in my life did this happen? As I always do, I embraced the moment—the illness with art—taking photos of my body every day during radiation and making collages with the text of my pathology report. Laughter was a great healer. I also was touched by the love and offering of support from people—surprisingly some of whom were not my closest of friends.  Since then I have embraced life even more, unafraid to take a chance, and have offered comfort and advice to others who are dealing with cancer.

NDERE: Where do you go for healing, not necessarily in terms of a physical location, but a more subtle space?

LL: I give out a lot of energy to people, but I am really a solitary person. I heal by being alone with my thoughts or making my art quietly in the middle of the city.  I am fortunate that I live with someone who is also a solitary person. What is healing for me is art, flowers, birds singing, laughter, and looking out the window. I need to always feel the energy of the city—it fuels and also heals me.  I am not a person who can live in the country. I need to feel the cement sidewalk under my feet. I am happiest being alone with my thoughts in New York, Paris, or traveling in Europe.

NDERE: Where do we go from here as a collective, any advice? 

LL: We can only continue to do what we are doing within the limitations of physical distancing. There is much loneliness due to the isolation. As artists, as people we need to reach out to heal and connect and bless each other during this time. Our art will sustain us, and it will evolve into new directions.

LuLu LoLo’s website / instagram / NYT Review / Pilgrimage by Proxy

LuLu LoLo is a performance artist, playwright/actor and activist for over twenty-five years. Ageism, immigration, historical references, ritualism, symbolism, myth, and always humor along with reverent irreverence are incorporated into LuLu’s performances. LuLu curated Art in Odd Places (AiOP) 2019: INVISIBLE, a public art festival featuring 82 artists celebrating the indomitable spirit of artists who are sixty years of age or older. LuLu has performed in six AiOP festivals over the past fifteen years in the guise of different personas to illustrate timely topical issues. Her public actions in Where Are the Women? (2015) highlighted the lack of public monuments to women in New York City and was featured in the New York Times; Blessings from Mother Cabrini, Saint of the Immigrants focused on immigrants of the world; and in 2018, stressing the fragility of the aging body, LuLu performed while wearing a chair strapped to her body offering A Seat for the Elderly: The Invisible Generation. As an activist, LuLu organized the Procession of 146 Shirtwaists and Sashes for the Centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. LuLu has written and performed eight one-person plays that evolved from her passion for historical research and social justice, especially as pertaining to the dramatic struggle of women in New York City’s past exemplified by subjects such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire; the lesbian lover of murder victim Kitty Genovese; women who fought in the civil war disguised as men; and the shameful treatment of the women consigned to the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland. Her plays and poetry have been published in Nerve Lantern Axon of Performance Literature, Meta-land Poets of the Palisades II, and 365 Women a Year a Playwriting Project. Her published essays include: “Art is the Path from Reality to the Soul” See You in the Streets, Ruth Sergel, University of Iowa Press, and "Growing Up Italian-American in a Wonder Bread World", Ovunque Siamo. LuLu received a Puffin Foundation Grant (2018). She was a 2013 Blade of Grass Fellow in social engagement, and a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Writer in Residence (2008). LuLu is a board member of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition and an Advisory Board Member of the City Reliquary Museum, Brooklyn.

More LuLu LoLo related links: vimeo: vimeo.com/fabulouslululolo / youtube: Youtube / twitter: @FabLuLuLoLo / facebook: LuluLoloProductions /  facebook: Where Are the Women?/ facebook: facebook.com/ParisPilgrimage / tumblr: paris-pilgrimage.tumblr.com/