Nancy Reddin Kienholz

Early life Reddin was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1943. Her father, Thomas Reddin (1916 – 2004) was born in New York City and worked in Los Angeles as a police officer; he would eventually serve as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department from 1967 to 1969 and appear on the cover of Time magazine in July 1968. Her mother, real estate broker Betty Parsons Reddin (b. 1921), was born in Denver, Colorado. Nancy was the youngest of three children, born after older brothers Thomas T. Reddin (1938 – 1985) and Michael Gray Reddin (b. 1942).

Reddin was first married at age 19. She had one child from this marriage, Christine, in 1964, but the marriage ended after two years. Reddin received no formal training in art, and worked several odd jobs in Los Angeles before beginning her collaborations with Ed Kienholz in 1972. Their first work together was The Middle Islands No. 1, now in the collection of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark. to work in the Federal Republic of Germany. The couple sold their house in Los Angeles, and Reddin moved with Kienholz and their children to West Berlin. The entire family, including the children,