Pat Colander auction

For fans of the late Eckhartz Press author Pat Colander, her estate is having a sale of some of her artwork. Here's an excerpt from the piece in yesterday's Tribune...

The event sale is at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23 at Rivich Auction House and Gallery, 1828 Indianapolis Blvd. in Whiting. Wine will be served at a preview reception at 6 p.m., one hour before the auction, which will include curated selections from Colander’s personal art and literary collections, paintings, books, glassware and personal items. There will also be an online auction for bidding from afar, with many of the lots already posted, by searching “Rivich Auction” at www.liveauctioneers.com. Smaller items will be sold with a silent auction during the event.

A number of autographed books, including some from her late film critic friend Roger Ebert, are included in sale.

In 2017, Pat published her last book that detailed her life in journalism and many great behind-the-scenes newsroom stories. She grew up on the south side of Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois and Purdue University Calumet. Her final book was "Hugh Hefner's First Funeral and Other True Tales of Love and Death in Chicago" (2015, Eckhartz Press, $15.95). The book title is taken from her details of the shocking death of Bobbie Arnstein, the executive secretary to Hugh Hefner and hailed as the woman behind the man who created the men's magazine empire. Other tales in the book range from a tour of the old Cook County morgue and the investigation that led to the capture of the Tylenol tampering killer.

Colander was also fascinated by the death of candy heiress Helen Brach, who was the subject on one of her earlier books, "Thin Air: The Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Helen Brach," published in 1982.

Artist Scott Covert used a stretched canvas and oil and wax-based crayons to create large works which depicts “rubbings” of the façade of tombstones and crypts of notable strange famous deaths, including those of comedians Phil Silvers, Oliver Hardy, Stringbean, Jackie Gleason, Marty Feldman, Lenny Bruce, Andy Kaufman and others. A matching piece by artist Covert does the same final resting place treatment for great writers including John Steinbeck, Louis L’Amour, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner and Bob Kane.