The second floor of Victoria Towers on Kirkwood Avenue is caught in a glass prism -- leaking glints of light through its bay windows and crushing the incoming rays into a million shards as they are bounced around the mirrored wainscoting, flung from the chandelier dangles, then repurposed in jars of blue Barbacide, cleansing the toothy combs at every beautician's work area. \nElizabeth Tieman & Hair Designers is an elegant salon, meant to polish and cut only the most beautiful, refined Midwestern ladies. Even Elizabeth Tieman is a glass bobble, sparkling from the rhinestone embellishments on her eyeglasses to the little crystal dots lining the pockets of her black slacks. She enjoys the glints of things -- the glint of instant gratification, the glint of adventure, the glint of stardom. \nOn a snowy Saturday morning, Tieman stood in the center of her salon. The only sounds were the rustling of a dulled broom against the tiled floor and the murmurs of country music on a distant storage room radio. Tieman swept through the tufted waiting room, announcing to any clients or coworkers that she was "just ducking out for a quick cigarette." \nShe returned shortly, caped in an invisible trail of smoke and winter draft, revived. \n"Sometimes, I just need a couple puffs of nicotine to get me going," she giggled as she pantomimed a few brisk sucking motions, her voice thrown an octave lower than expected, probably from years of "a couple puffs" here and there. "My daughter gets on me about it. She hates it." \nTieman plopped down in an Art Deco-inspired chair, reminiscent of an oyster shell. Her pupils widened as they filled with the room's excess of light, taking a moment to marvel her life's work. After almost 30 years in Victoria Towers, Tieman will close the appointment book. \nIt isn't her choice to leave the historic Kirkwood building. Still, she is ready to go out on her own.
ACT I\nA homegrown Hoosier, Tieman passed her school day afternoons the same way many other teenage girls did in the '60s. With records popping and crackling in the background, she twisted bundles of her girlfriends' hair around pink hot rollers, trying to replicate the modeled looks of glamorous women. Tieman experimented with her own 'do, fearless of flailing scissors and home-dying kits. \n"My hair became a lovely shade of glowing yellow," she recalls today. \nIt was a girlie coming-of-age ritual that never struck her as a potential career. She often met her father's encouragement to pursue beauty school with scoffs and disbelief. College was where she was headed. \n"So I went to IU, but what I continually found was that I noted there was something inside me that wanted to make people happy. Like at first I was enrolled in nursing school, but the sight of blood made me cringe. Then I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian because I loved animals and wanted to help people by helping their pets that were hurt. Then I thought sometimes the animals die, and I just couldn't handle that. It would just make me too sad. So after my dad brought it up to me again, about going to beauty school and doing this thing that I had a love for, I finally decided to listen to him. And there wasn't even a beauty school in Bloomington at the time. The nearest school was in Bedford, called House of James. I mean in that time, it was rare for a woman to have any kind of career.\n"As I can recall, it was mainly my dad who was the encourager. My mom had a very quiet role in things. But you know, your parents have an inside view of their kids. They know their strong suits, and my dad had me pinpointed. And I do love what I do.\n"My dad told me, 'You've already got it over 98 percent of people, then.' I really believe that's a requirement. Like when you sit down a client, you give them instant gratification. You can go on a diet, and in a few months, you can start to see a return to your shape, or you can exercise, but all of those things take awhile. But just by my careful observation of that person, I can introduce to them new colors, new cuts, and instantly, they have more confidence. It's an extraordinary blessing to me." \nSchool was too regimented for Tieman's liking. The House of James required a certain kind of shoe and a certain kind of uniform. She had to clock in a certain number of hours styling mannequin heads with a mucous serum and blister her fingers on spikey hot rollers. Tieman dreaded the bouffant and coiffure tediousness of the era. She was notorious for hiding behind the hot water heater when occasional clients came to the school for Aqua-netted styles, resembling the shapes of bird nests and beehives. Tieman worked at a pace that didn't allow for major sculpting and construction projects. \nIf it weren't for the invention of the blow dryer, Tieman might have had to swap her paddle brush for a profession with quicker results. But she made it through, and soon she was apprenticing for the only beauty salon on the Bloomington main drag.
ACT II\nWhen Tieman is asked about her brush with Hollywood, the story unfurls like a rehearsed screenplay, equipped with crescendo-ing action, moments of cliffhangers and suspense to keep an audience on the edge of a beauty stool. The scene opens with Tieman's first line:\n"The movie 'Breaking Away' came to Bloomington, and the whole town was just lit up..." \nAs a young twentysomething, Tieman basked in the presence of Hollywood stars like Dennis Quaid. From the second floor balcony of Victoria Towers, she remembers watching Kirkwood Avenue filmings and meeting the cast and entourage as they shuffled in and out of her mentor's salon. She secretly wished for a future in "the industry."\nHer chance came a few years later when country-rock musician John Mellencamp decided to direct and star in a film loosely based on his life in southern Indiana called "Falling from Grace." \nMellencamp's manager, Harry Sandler, offered her an audition of sorts, which consisted of Tieman giving Sandler a haircut in his hotel room. He hired Tieman on the spot to be an assistant hair stylist for the film. \n"I knew I was where I was supposed to be."\nHer connections behind the scenes of the local film opened up an opportunity for her to work on another movie that would be shot in Asheville, N.C., called "The Last of the Mohicans." \n"At 4 o'clock in the morning, I arrived at base camp. All the sudden, I see Indians walking around in loin cloths. Then someone asks me, 'Is this your first day on set? Well, welcome to hell!' The difference between Mellencamp's movie and this was that suddenly, I was working on a huge, big budget, $27 million movie. At one time, there would be 30,000 people at base camp. I mean, we're talking major motion picture here.\n"It was such a hard movie to do. It was set on Lake James, so we had to hike up this mountain in a 110-degree heat index. People were dropping like flies; makeup was melting down actors' faces. It wasn't glamorous." \nAnd once the canisters were closed, Tieman returned to Bloomington, walked up a flight of stairs and found herself back in her jewelry box, never to work on the set of another film, despite the fact that it wasn't her last offer. A chance to crew "A League of Their Own" and "Blue Chips" came and went. \n"My daughter was just a little girl at the time when those offers came around. She said, 'Mama, just wait one more year.' She said, 'Pinky swear me.' I just couldn't at the time. It would have been damaging."
ACT III\nTieman reposes in her oyster shell. Her children are now 18 and 21. She has owned the second-story salon for a little more than five years, but has to break up the business for lease reasons. \nAfter her brief moment of relaxation, she will spend the rest of her day cardboard boxing and duct taping, packing up odds and ends and preparing for her move to a new location on Dunn Street. Her staff of stylists will join another salon, and she will venture a few blocks away on her own. She calls it "The Sad Story of Victoria Towers," as if the space could be personified. Victoria was a dear friend of hers, lovely and demure, a constant through her milestones and undeserving of the current misfortune.\nBut in her oyster, Tieman is already thinking through her next move. She's got a glint in her eye about registering on the Indiana Film Commission roster, waiting for Hollywood to breeze back through the Indiana cornfields and land somewhere within her grasp.\n"Fifty is not too late," she smirks. "You only know it's too late when you're not breathing anymore." \nFor appointments at Tieman's new salon at 105 N. Dunn St., call 323-8767.
