Kelly’s Salon/Art Museum

Kelly Johnson Barnett and Nall posing in the bathroom at Kelly's Salon. (Image courtesy of Kelly Johnson Barnett)

Nall went to high school with my dad. His parents’ house was a street over from ours.When I was in high school, I interviewed Nall for my French class because he was living in France at the time. The day I interviewed Nall he had just gotten back from Mexico.He was making frittatas in his mother’s kitchen. It was fun.

Nall wanted me to join him in Nice and live at his art colony and I was all for it. However,I was fifteen years old and my parents were like, ‘Absolutely not!’ So it was not to be.

After high school, I went to cosmetology school. I would go to the Hollis home and do Mr. and Mrs. Hollis’s hair. Sometimes Mrs. Hollis would come over to the school, pull up in the driveway and scream for me to come out so she could set up an appointment. I loved Mrs. Hollis a lot and she was a hoot! She told me that one time when she was going to visit Nall in Paris she was so mad at her husband that she went to the restroom in the airport and dyed her hair red. She was a real character and I miss her a lot.

After Mrs. Hollis passed away, Nall was going to have her cremated. Before the cremation started Nall started having second thoughts about everything she was wearing. He didn’t want her going into the afterlife with the outfit she had on, so he stopped the cremation. He went to his car and got an Alabama shirt that he had and put that on her. Then he wanted to remove one of her fingernails and her earrings. He also wanted a lock of her hair. He thought the people there were acting crazy because he kept stopping them when they were about to do the cremation. He finally settled for cutting off a lock of her hair and the cremation proceeded.

Kelly Johnson Barnett cutting Nall's hair in her salon. (Image courtesy of Kelly Johnson Barnett)

Nall would come to my salon when he was in Arab and I would trim his hair. One time when I wanted to cut his eyebrows along with the trim. He told me that I couldn’t trim his eyebrows because they were his good luck charms. He finally agreed to letting me trim them a little bit. I used

Kelly’s Salon bathroom featuring artwork by Nall (Image courtesy of Kelly Johnson Barnett)

I had Nall’s artwork in the bathroom of my salon. I had quite a few pieces on the walls.He came to the salon several times because, as he said, ‘this was the closest thing he had as a museum in Arab’. He signed my wall. He then said to me, ‘you know, that’s where my work belongs—in the shitter’. That was Nall. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Kelly Johnson Barnett
Hair stylist
Nall collector
lifelong friend