I spent about four weeks over the course of this past fall painting lines.  My housemates at the time could tell you about the way I stared blankly at the kitchen table, seemingly braindead from the fumes of house paint...eyes, thoughts, and fingers blazed from Orange and Grey, Orange and Grey...

Harry Roseman, installation artist, studio art professor, and Chair of Vassar's Art department at the time, had taken me aboard to assist with a project launching Vassar's new installation series, one that commissions contemporary artists to transform the atrium space of the beautiful Lehman Loeb Art Center on campus, a space graced by Picasso, Ellsworth Kelly, and Francis Bacon.  Back as a college freshman at Vassar I'd done some handiwork of my own in this space - I'd worked my second semester as one of the Preparator's assistants, pasting up labels beside the expensive frames and, one time, painting a scuff blemish back to wood color with watercolors on the museum floor.  That'd been a trying semester for me, fresh to the wear-off of college's initial hype and promise...disillusioned by best friends grown apart and a potential boyfriend gone for someone more hipster.  I remember the way I  dissolved heavy in the nails I sorted for Bruce, the lumbering Preparator, who looked like a strapping Santa Claus and never failed to mispronounce my name ("Golin")...and the way I silently swept pessimism on the dusty-cased Chinese ceramics to which I tended.  Back when I made the decision not to return to the job as a sophomore, I never would have imagined that my first gig post-graduation would be, in a sense, right where I'd began.

 When we got to the Loeb Art Center (Harry, myself, and five other assistants), the walls were an angry shade of freshly grated carrot.  Over the course of a few weeks, recorded in fast-motion intervals of bouncing scissor lifts, snaking grey lines, and the scurrying of the seven of us clad in bright yellow harnesses, we softened the space into a sort of sensational seventies revival corner.  But first Ellsworth Kelly had to go.  Rumor was that Ellsworth wouldn't tolerate sharing a room with another artist (a rumor brought into question during my later trip to the Whitney Museum), but whatever the reason, movers came to carry away Kelly's horizontal piece (which had hung in the Loeb since its opening and also features orange and grey) from the space that we would proceed to invade.

Most of the time, Harry was absorbed in evaluating the space and the visual decisions he made in it with orange and grey.  He ran back and forth between the atrium and his office in the connecting building, tending to his duties as Art Chair.  He gesticulated, squinted his lashless eyes, and spoke loudly with slow, but firm insistence.  He looked a bit like Tigger in his coiled yellow harness, which he kept on when trotting between buildings.  He lost our timesheets the first time around and several times sent us on errands to the hardware store.  He also brought us a delicious buttery lemon tart that his wife had made, treated us to a fancy meal out, and played us in vigorous ping pong matches between painting.

 When people ask me about the privilege of working for Harry Roseman, an artist whose work is permanently and prominently featured at the JFK Arrivals Terminal and in the New York City subway system, I don't really have much to say about the actual process or artistic implementation.  I think more about what transpired between us on a scissor lift one afternoon as I stood harnessed behind him, dipping his brush repeatedly in grey and raising us higher in intervals as he brought his lines and circles to life.  "You know, I used to be shy like you" is something like what Harry said, breaking our silence.  We talked about how Harry used to be a daydreamer, a private person with wild visions and nothing to say.  That only upon beginning as a teacher (an accidental career) did he feel pressed to cultivate a verbally engaging persona.  We spoke about private and public selves, about the ability to be candid and real without indulgence, arrogance, and carelessness.  With the Poughkeepsie Journal on its way to interview Harry, an upcoming WAMC Radio interview, and a large public talk approaching at the art opening, these issues were ripe for discussion.  

 Descending the lift, I wondered, "How do we balance our guarded  public personas with the vulnerable sparks of our personal cores?"  Something happened in that moment on the scissor lift.  A space cut open, a contemplation of a future or past self, a lowering of guards, a recognition.

The installation "Hole in the Wall" is viewable in all its stages and completion on Harry's website.