working in collections storage

Flo's birthday party: dolmates, spiced rice, cucumber salad, cake, akavit & hamms.

FIrst portion of dream forgotten.

I'm in the back yard, talking over the fence with Missy. A group of guests has just left our house after a few days' stay, and another pair [Sheryl? Jason? someone like that] are going soon. I tell Missy that our house is almost empty, and I'm sure that the relief in my voice carries and that my guests feel like I want to be rid of them, but I feel bad for giving them that impression. It is warm, summery, everything is green and there are flowers.

Bonnie Verardo walks up to me at the gate and says that she's figured out everything except a few last paintings and hangers that she can't match up. She's taped three little boxes-- each ostensibly containing a hanging apparatus-- to a paper-sheet-sized board. These need matching up to their respective paintings. I think we're talking about Patrick Nagatani works, but the actual images are much more like Clinton Adams or Earl Stroh. But I'm fully familiar with the work, as we did a show of these not long ago.

I'm in collections storage, with the three hangers that Bonnie couldn't rectify. The space is a long, narrow room. To my left are a series of Savary-style steel/laminate shelves, to my right are deep, narrow cubbies, maybe more sliding-wall style. All of the paintings are on the steel shelves, and I begin to fish through them. From the style and designs on the hanger boxes, I think I can divine that one is probably from the 60's, one from the 80's, and one maybe from the 90's or even more recent. While looking through, I find a series of large, vaseline-colored paintings on boxy plex constructions. One is positioned terribly, with it's neighbor's edge across its face, I know that it is going to score the surface, and I want to move them all around for better situation.

But then there's this woman in the room with me-- 40's, jeans, vest-- and she wants to have basic "isn't art wonderful" chit chat. She has the aspect of a person casually shopping. I'm frustrated, because I need to get her out of there before I can mess with these paintings. It's sort of an open studio type situation, which I find to be a bad idea. There are other people coming in, too. A man in a denim jacket is pushing a little shopping cart full of translucent, plastic, 3-D capital letters (do they give off light from within themselves?). This is too much. I charge down on him and tell him that he has to take his basket out of the storage area. He looks dumfounded. Why doesn't he respond? What do I need to say to get through? Then I realize that I'm wearing a heavy waterproof pullover jacket thing, and my staff ID is down inside. I rip down the zipper and present my ID, which looks a lot like a Wild Oats name tag, and has hand written info in a form-like format. I take his shopping cart from him, and explain that it can be just outside the door here. He's relieved, I think, but I'm having none of this. This is all a bad idea.