79-Year-Old Artist Turns Her Focus to Making Dolls

Riverwoods resident Lenore Sollo has been doing artwork all her life. But when she injured her back, the 79-year-old was no longer able to walk upstairs to use her studio.

“My husband had to be the one dragging everything around for me,” Sollo said. “It got to be too much.”

Looking for something she could work on downstairs in the kitchen, Sollo began making dolls. She sews and stuffs the doll’s bodies, molds their faces and covers them with fabric. Sollo studied dress design at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and puts that knowledge to use designing ornate clothing for her figures.

Each doll has a name like Guinevere the Puppeteer, who sits dangling marionettes on strings, or Alice, who is posed with smaller dolls portraying other characters from Alice in Wonderland. Sollo is constantly on the hunt for accessories to use in her creations like doll-sized chairs, wheelbarrows and decorative flowers. They take about a week and a half of work to complete.

A Chicago native, Sollo said she always drew as a child, but that her family first recognized her talent when she won a city-wide drawing contest and received a $50 bond at an awards ceremony at Soldier Field.

“To us, it was a lot of money,” she said. “The mayor sent me a letter. To my family, that was very exciting.”

Sollo received a scholarship to attend the Art Institute of Chicago. She married and lived in Highland Park for 45 years, before moving to Riverwoods 12 years ago. She sold large pieces crafted from handmade paper for more than $1,000 throughout the Chicago area, attending events including the Old Town Art Fair, Oakbrook Center Invitational Fine Art Exhibition and Skokie’s . She kept the pieces that didn’t sell and used them to decorate her home.

“I don’t want to do the art fairs anymore,” she said. “It’s a lot of work and I’m not a young kid anymore.”

That doesn’t mean she’s stopped selling her work. She recently did a show at the where she sold her dolls for $200 to $300 and took custom orders from people who wanted specific designs or colors.

“With today’s economy, I just can’t ask what I really should,” she said.

Sollo has also worked on pieces with her daughter Tami Bloom. The Glenview resident makes bead jewelry framing small paintings by her mother. Their collaborations have proved incredibly popular with buyers.

“People like things they can wear,” Sollo said.

Even though she suffers from arthritis, Sollo plans to keep working and learning more about art.

“I’m thinking of taking a sculpture class,” she said. “As long as my hands are busy doing creative things, I’m happy.”