By Andrew Thurston | Illustration by Nicole Hollander<\/p>\n
For more than 30 years, Nicole Hollander\u2019s cartoons were syndicated nationwide. Every day, a fresh Sylvia<\/a><\/i> strip would spill from her pen, the eponymous central character providing sharp\u2014often biting\u2014commentary on political and social issues. Sylvia, said Ms. Magazine<\/i> in 2010, was a \u201cfeminist heroine for the ages.\u201d<\/p>\n Nicole Hollander<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n And then in 2012, Sylvia<\/i> was retired and Hollander (\u201966) found herself staring at a blank sheet of paper.<\/p>\n Freed from the pressure of daily output, Hollander took up a two-week residency at Ragdale, a nonprofit artists\u2019 community on the edge of a 50-acre prairie in Lake Forest, Ill. She arrived with \u201chuge rolls of really beautiful, heavy, white paper\u201d and some charcoal\u2014and little idea of what to do with them.<\/p>\n She stapled the paper to the wall of her temporary studio\u2014a room with an old radio and expansive, pastoral view\u2014and stepped back.<\/p>\n \u201cTo have a huge space, to be looking out at another huge space, that freed me up to think about the past,\u201d says Hollander.<\/p>\n She started drawing a sliver of her childhood.<\/p>\n As a kid, Hollander lived in an apartment building in Chicago\u2019s West Garfield Park, then not one of the city\u2019s best neighborhoods, now one of its most dangerous. At Ragdale, Hollander sketched the archway leading to her section of the building, filling the picture with memories: her mother listening to the neighbors through a drinking glass on the floor; a police officer ready to confront her father, \u201cwho had once again decided to tear up the ticket that he was just given.\u201d<\/p>\n The past continued to flow onto the paper, eventually forming Hollander\u2019s graphic novel memoir, We Ate Wonder Bread<\/a><\/i> (Fantagraphics, 2018), lauded by the Chicago Review of Books<\/a><\/i> as \u201ca hilarious, heartfelt excavation of a lost Chicago, as well as a perfect introduction to Hollander\u2019s trademark wit and style.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just started drawing,\u201d says Hollander of capitalizing on the freedom her prairie view gave her, \u201cand that was really the best thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The vastness of a prairie view and a roll of blank paper gave cartoonist Nicole Hollander (\u201966) space to sketch her past By Andrew Thurston | Illustration by Nicole Hollander For more than 30 years, Nicole Hollander\u2019s cartoons were syndicated nationwide. Every day, a fresh Sylvia strip would spill from her pen, the eponymous central […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14030,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[42,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6405"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14030"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6405"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6719,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6405\/revisions\/6719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cTo have a huge space, to be looking out at another huge space, that freed me up to think about the past.\u201d<\/h3>\n