Feature by Phoebe Sarah Dittmore Klebahn
Photos by Norman Godinez
Lolo Dederer is a junior in Columbia College studying Architecture. She is a multimedia artist with a special interest in watercolor, acrylic paint and the use of found and gathered objects. Her work focuses on collecting emotions, moments, and physical items into cohesive images that inspire self reflection in their viewer.
When Lolo arrives at our meeting, her outfit is eclectic: paint-dotted jeans, several long layers of necklaces, and a green and white trucker hat. She greets me with a warm smile and immediately we get to talking about where to chat in order to avoid both the crowd in Joe’s Coffee and the rain.
We end up at the architecture studio where one of her classes meets. She tells me about her memories of creating. Her first artistic explorations centered around her mom who was “always making stuff.” Lolo says that: “She’d make us little figurines and paper dollies and paper doctor’s kits.” Her mother had a studio at home, and on her and her sister’s birthdays, she would ask guests to bring homemade art pieces in lieu of more traditional gifts. One of the first pieces of art Lolo remembers creating is a paper full of little lines as a gift to her older sister Oona on her fourth birthday.
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Lolo and her family save these pieces of artwork in binders. Although her mom was the first one who stored her art, Lolo is now the collector of the family. “I feel like I’ve always been a bit of a pack rat, and my family always makes fun of me for it. My mom would come to tuck me in for bed, and there would be rocks, maybe a pen, and other random stuff under my pillow.”
reliquary to an empty mind
Her current creative process draws on both her experience with collecting physical items and her desire to preserve memories and emotions. Over the pandemic, a friend encouraged Lolo to start journaling, a practice that allowed her to capture moments and feelings from her day-to-day life. Lolo’s journaling evolved into drawings in her notebooks as a meditation on transitory emotions and events. She uses journaling as a tool to “remember and attach myself to something that I have collected and is sitting in the back of my brain.”
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This shift towards using her art as a form of emotional processing is fairly new. Up until a few years ago, Lolo’s art was more illustrative, a style which is still perceivable in her current portfolio. She states that her journaling “became a way to almost meditate on a feeling without putting words to it, which is something that we all can work on: not needing to always know how you feel. One of my friends always says ‘you don’t need to put a name to your feelings because not everything has a name.’ [Artmaking] is a nice way to just sit with things, and get away from obsessive journaling.”
This meditative practice permeates Lolo’s current work. Her direct, spontaneous approach to drawing and painting can be easily seen in her figurative drawings. The piece “Egotistical Maniac” is a “portrait of self reflection” drawn after a run in Riverside Park. She recalls her process for the piece: “Sometimes you feel like your brain is all over the place. I had this really strange experience after running when I went home and said ‘okay I’m gonna draw myself.’ Sometimes when I do these drawings, I think about how egotistical it is for me to be sitting here drawing myself, thinking about myself.’ Trying to figure out the proper way to perceive yourself is kinda tricky.” This self-reflective tendency is echoed in Lolo’s choice of creative space, as she primarily likes to work alone in her room. She tells me that she prefers to create art in “a little cocoon to think and make.”
egotisticalmaniac
Over quarantine, she was able to hone the mixed-media and found object aspect of her work as her online architecture class encouraged her to build models with whatever she could find around her. This kick-started her recent foray into painting on found boxes and pieces of cardboard she picks up off the street. One of her paintings shows a single body, depicted in oil paint on a found cardboard canvas, with its head seemingly being torn apart into many different heads and faces. Lolo tells me she painted the piece after an argument with her mother.
Lolo is generous with her art and her creative process, hosting art making events for her friends in her dorm room. She and her roommate gather people together to create exquisite corpses—collective drawings where one person draws a tiny portion of a picture without being able to see what anyone else has drawn before them. She also volunteers with Artists Reaching Out, a club on campus through which artists teach art classes in elementary schools in the surrounding neighborhood.
In teaching and sharing her art with others Lolo emphasizes going “a little crazy! I feel like taking the pressure off yourself in making art is important. Playing is important.” She strongly believes in the value of art—regardless of style, quality, or perceived “goodness.” “I’m a big proponent of whatever you make, as long as you are making things and you make enough of it, it's valuable.”
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When asked about the future of her art practice, she answers that, “I hope to always have some kind of creative practice just for the sake of fun. I hope to be involved creatively, whether it’s creative directing, architecture, or at a design firm.” Lolo’s free spirit is palpable in her art work. It is impossible to witness without feeling a profound respect for both her and her artistic journey.
You can find more about Lolo and her work: @lolo.archdesign