tart 1.n. round of pastry with jam etc. on top; pie with fruit or sweet filling. tart 2.n sl. prostitute, immoral woman. 2v. colloq. dress up gaudily, smarten up. 3.a of acid taste; cutting; bitter.
Nicole Steen is a Pop Tart. Not one of the sugary breakfast pastries, but rather one-half of an art collective that aims to turn the image of females in pop culture on its head. The Vancouver-based Steen was in town this winter showcasing some of her paintings as part of the Vicious, Delicious, and Ambitious book launch and exhibit at the Ne Plus Ultra gallery on Queen West. The lavish book features what it calls “lowbrow” art—pin-ups, pop art, cartoons—all depicting various heroines and villanesses as seen from the perspective of over 200 female artists.
Also an acclaimed singer-songwriter and the frontwoman for Vancouver “torch noir” band COAL, Steen squeezed in a series of solo dates while in Ontario. In fact, just hours prior to jumping on a plane home, she managed to play a quick set at the popular weekly Wavelength series at Sneaky Dee’s, and sat down to talk about her art.
“I found the response to be really excellent,” Steen said over the punk music blasting through the club speakers. “Everyone who came into the show really loved it and were really supportive. Unfortunately, your average folk are not rolling in the money—they’d love to buy the art, but they can’t. We sold quite a few books, though, which was great. But everybody was super-supportive of it, and thought that we should definitely be getting more exposure.”
Steen’s particular style of art is only now starting to make inroads into the mainstream market. The genre defines itself by female artists working with feminine imagery within popular culture. Vicious, Delicious, and Ambitious Ladies: 20th Century Women Artists is a heavy hardcover that offers up images of everything from Marilyn Monroe to Minnie Mouse in glossy Technicolour.
“A lot of the stuff has mainly been exposed on the West Coast, through magazines like Juxtapose and International Tattoo Art magazine and that kind of thing,” Steen explained. “Most of the artists (in the book and art show) are American, but there’s three Canadians, including myself. So we thought we’d bring it to the Canadian public and see what they thought.”
We’re used to thinking of pin-ups and centerfolds as archaic boys’ club relics, but Steen and the other artists who work within the genre play with around with the stereotypes, re-fashioning those outdated images with a feminist twist. Still, most of the works are unabashedly sexual, and it’s a fine line between viewing them as inspirational instead of mere titillation.
“Curiously, we haven’t had any [backlash] from women,” Steen said. “Men, I think the only negative reaction has been in a lecherous, leering way, thinking it’s just purely sexual and that’s the nature of it. They’re just not looking beyond that, they’re not looking underneath it. It’s sometimes tough to explain to a man exactly what a woman’s perspective is, and where we’re coming from, but I think they see the humour in it, mostly.”
Steen and her Pop Tarts partner Vicki M. joined forces in 2000, opening an eponymous gallery in popular indie store Zulu Records. Word-of-mouth spread quickly, and before the lease ran out on the space last year, they had over 200 artists on their roster. Since the gallery closed, the Pop Tarts have operated from cyberspace, networking with like-minded artists via their website.
“It really did catch on,” Steen reflected. “There’s definitely a sore need for galleries like that in Vancouver, and in Canada as well. We would like to open another gallery, but it just hasn’t happened yet. I think it would just have to be one of those magic, appropriate things. The timing would have to be right, because we’re both busy with our own art, and it’s really tough to run a gallery and do our own stuff at the same time. But in the meantime, we’ve been finding the most amazing work. People are sending me links to their websites, and it’s like this whole treasure chest.”
While this subversive genre is slowly starting to be noticed in art circles, Steen has been painting for nearly 15 years, apprenticing with fellow indie musicians-cum-artists in the nascent West Coast scene during the eighties before finding her own creative voice.
“I’m a musician and I started out playing guitar, and I was always into early eighties pop divas—bands like Blondie and Siouxsie Sioux,” Steen explained. “I found them to be very artistic in their style, and I thought, ‘I’d just really love to document that,’ and I started drawing them early on, doing paintings for friends as presents and so on.”
Steen says her dual careers fuel each other. Her band COAL is one of the longest-running independent acts in the country, having been together over ten years and enjoyed some airplay on MuchMusic. They continue to work together, but as the principal songwriter, Steen will sometimes play solo dates, like her slate of Ontario gigs. Her music is almost the flipside of her artwork—dark and ethereal in contrast to her bright, saucy paintings.
“I think my serious side is definitely more in the music—the angst comes out in the music, whereas the art is way more a reflection of what I’m seeing around me,” Steen said. “That’s why we chose to paint female subjects represented in popular culture, because it was just a question of who we were at young women at the time, and what had made us the way we were. Just basically a lot of reflection of what was around us.”
While Steen has had dozens of solo and group shows in Vancouver, her inclusion in the Ne Plus Ultra exhibit was her first showing in Toronto. She says she sees parallels between the way the indie art and music scenes intersect here and in her hometown.
“I’m totally from that DIY scene in Vancouver. I’ve been a punk-rock kid and just always decided to do it independently. It would be great if all artists could tour across Canada—it’s well worth hitting the road and doing stuff and connecting with people and networking, but it’s not easy. So it helps when local scenes are thriving.
“The Vancouver scene is in turnaround. Everything is cyclical—we had a lot of venues close, a lot of talented people moved away, but in the hole they left, new life sprang up. I know Toronto’s been through the same thing as well, and it seems that people know each other here and are supporting each other and the scene, so it’s a pretty good time to be an artist.”
