“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

Installing “AFlOAT: An Installation” was a work in and of itself. Positioning, measuring, art and design skills were involved. (And balancing on a ladder.) An installation is just that. It’s the entire gallery up for review. Not the individual pieces. I had to install the one hundred slightly deflated rings as well as the one hundred collages on the gallery walls. I wanted to convey a feeling of a flood. Of jarred materials bumping up against the shore. Each element had to be positioned just right.

I forget how long it took. I do know my husband and I worked tirelessly, late into the night in the gallery in Chelsea. The gallery is located on the same side of the street, very close to the club of dubious distinction, Scores, a hangout for businessmen and scantily clothed young women.

Scores did not make a difference in the hanging of this show, but I got the key to the gallery one day, and had to have the work installed forty-eight hours later. It was either sleep overnight in the gallery both nights, or leave very late, walk quickly down the street to Eleventh Avenue. Catch a cab and eat out of our hotel’s vending machines for dinner. You know, Snickers and Fritos make for a good dinner at three AM. The other night I remember eating something slightly more nutritious. It was something. But the hour was later, and I don’t know what it was we ate.

I remember that leaving the gallery later was better than leaving at one-thirty. Leaving at two-thirty or three when all the men were catching cabs outside of Scores made us feel safer walking to Eleventh Avenue.

As my friend and collaborator on “Bread In The Sky”, Vince Wiggins would say, paraphrased from David Byrne, you really don’t want to know how the sausage is made, you just want it next to your eggs.