BY NICOLE HOLLANDER

My living room.

My friend sits in the living room with a dreamy expression on her face.

“I would like you to go away and I will sit alone in your living room and look at things.”

I am afraid if I go away, she will be unable to help herself from helping herself to the one item that she loves and I cannot part with…the little music box shaped like a Bavarian house.

When you wind it up it plays “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and the roof of the little house opens very slowly and slower still, a wooden structure with 12 spaces for cigarettes rises to the top and then very quickly closes.

I have an idea. I will talk to a gallery owner I know about replicating my living room. I will exhibit things I have collected and things I have made, and things I will make at the last minute.

He agrees. The exhibit will be at Lill Street Gallery in Chicago in the end of October.

The title is: Come Into My Parlor, Said the Spider to the Fly.