Living with Kim Holleman’s “Old World Order” (2004)

During the summer of 2004, I had a small surgery and my next door neighbor, artist Kim Holleman, came over to paint a mural for a party we were throwing called “The Preemptive Bash.”

I languished hopped up on Tylenol 3s and enjoying the hum of my air conditioner, watching DVDs, and she projected her acetate drawings onto my wall—in the guise of nursing me to health.

I think Kim assumed I’d whitewash it and I remember her once offering to do it herself, but I liked it. It’s brightened up a lot of days and now that I’m thinking of moving, I realized that I can’t part ways.

“Old World Order” (photos) tells the mystic history of oil with a 1950s folk style that adorned old gas stations. We were already in the Iraq War and I knew Kim needed to express some conflicting feelings about the war.

The tractor trailer is painted a metallic silver, the masonic pyramid showered in thin green paint and the oil refinery is covered with what looks like rubbed charcoal. Across the yellow sky a string of blue and yellow light bulbs shoot out of the central object, an obelisk/oil well-like thing…equal parts Washington Monument and power line tower.

Originally when it was installed there was a female sculpture hanging from my ceiling. It was horizontal, abstracted and filled with Christmas lights. There was a single black wire that connected to the mural’s oblesilk/oil well/Washington Monument/power line tower and there was a wire snaking to the wall socket by the windows (one wall of my loft has huge windows). But a year later, Kim and I both thought it didn’t belong.

What can I say about my beloved mural? I’m enchanted by its fairy tale-like worldview every time I see it. It’s 11 foot in width and seems to hug my whole loft.

kimholleman.com.