Destiny
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was hurling through time and space in its eight-month journey to the fourth planet from the sun. Hurricane Katrina had unleashed its swirling fury over New Orleans. Destiny's Child broke up after their last summer tour date in Vancouver. I was purging my hard drive from hulking 'Introduction to Art History' PowerPoint presentations in my third-floor Buffalo walk-up. A new season of movement and change was brewing in the early autumn of 2005.
When I finished grad school a year earlier, I was flat broke, and my mind was in a state of scattered detritus. To postpone my Ph.D. applications, and to pay my rent, I surrendered to the glamorous life of an adjunct instructor. If you know anyone who took an art history course in the Western New York region in the 2004/2005 academic year, I was the instructor. I took on a load of seven courses, darting from state college to university, from Jesuit campus to prep school, peeling into parking lots, wearing out high heels, and living on a diet of coffee and vending machine Twizzlers. At times I felt like Picasso's Weeping Woman, my face falling into pieces as I struggled to prepare lectures and grade papers. Other times I felt like Delacroix's Liberty, leading hundreds of students through the choppy waters of critical discourse. But mostly, I had just pressurized into a dense meteoroid of stress. The end of the spring semester was a great physical relief. I shot through the atmosphere like a falling star as I embarked on the last genuinely riotous summer of my youth. At 34 years old, it was a late-bloomer's grand finale. There was dancing in bars with scandalously young boys. There was sitting on beer-splashed sidewalks during rock show intermissions. There were big driveway dinner parties that lasted until the birds started chirping. By September, I returned to earth with an unceremonious thud. It would be a new season of earnest intention.
* * *
Having purged my hard drive of Art History's greatest hits, I was now stacking the majority of my personal effects like a game of Tetris into the back stairwell of my apartment, violating all known fire codes. Jimmy, my subletter, was coming to pick up the keys so he could take over my lease. My sister, Natalie, was on the street, loading my unwieldy CRT monitor and cinderblock of a PC into her hatchback. I joined her there, carrying two meowing cats, Piglet and Mouse, their angry fur flying and sticking to my lip gloss. I loaded the cats into the front passenger seat of my Volkswagen Beetle, double-decker bus style in their plastic crates, and handed my sister the seven-page MapQuest print-out with the directions to Elverson, PA. The cicadas were flexing and buzzing in the trees above.
I looked up toward the mansard roof and waved goodbye to Jimmy, trying hard not to imagine what he might do to my Pier 1 upholstery. Natalie and I set off in our tandem caravan for my new job in the art world, my cats wildly meowing as I pulled away from the curb. All of my academic and adjunct teaching labor paid off. I was finally getting out of Buffalo.
Conestoga Road, Elverson, Pennsylvania
I had a lot of time to think during that drive from Buffalo as I passed the farmlands and small towns of New York State and Pennsylvania. I listened to Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism on repeat until I achieved a meditative state of clarity, interrupted only by rest stops where I snuck McDonald's fries into my car when Natalie wasn't paying attention. I thought back to my job interview less than a month earlier.
* * *
At the end of August, I'd flown to Bar Harbor, Maine, to meet with Marion Boulton "Kippy" Stroud for the position of Curatorial Assistant. There would be four locations for this job. Each summer would be devoted to managing her artist residency think tank, known as the Acadia Summer Arts Program (A.S.A.P.) on Mt. Desert Island—colloquially known among art world cognisati, as Kamp Kippy. Autumn would be spent at Kippy's central command station, a country estate in Elverson, Pennsylvania, planning for the next summer season in Maine. Winter would include a retreat to Kippy's West Palm Beach compound to escape the northern freeze, with more summer season planning. Spring would involve a short stint at the Fabric Workshop & Museum (FWM) in Philadelphia, a non-profit art space founded by Kippy, where I would attend to Kippy's personal art collection. My late summer interview introduced me to the Kamp Kippy staff just as the season was wrapping up in Maine.
Kippy, the heiress to the Tylenol fortune, is the Anna Wintour of the contemporary art world, even in her uniform of Patagonia fleece and sweatpants. Aside from founding and directing A.S.A.P. and the FWM, Kippy is a published author, philanthropist, dog breeder, collector, curator, art world guru, and quintessential tough-as-nails New England Blue Blood. She owns half the waterfront real estate on Mt. Desert Island, has a considerable influence on who earns a coveted MacArthur Fellowship each year, and she picked me up at the airport herself. I thought she might send an assistant—I thought she was the assistant—when I saw a disheveled woman in crocs standing next to a dusty and dented Toyota minivan.
"Joanna!" she barked, waving me over impatiently while limping over to open the rear gate as if she just had hip surgery. As I rolled my carry-on closer, I could see she hadn't washed her short grey hair in some time. Her eyes were crystal clear blue, piercing, and somewhat startling. Despite her hurry to get back on the road, she greeted me with a warm but reserved smile, the corners of her mouth downturned, revealing hastily applied lipstick.
As we get inside the minivan, she pushed her sleeves up before she gripped the steering wheel, and I notice she is wearing two watches, one on each wrist, each with a simple white face and navy and red stripe grosgrain ribbon band. The console and dash are a tangled array of cell phones in various docking stations, and a snarl of chargers strewn across dirty coffee cups. A laminated list of telephone numbers typed in navy blue Arial font was taped to the dashboard. I notice "revised 8/26/2005" at the top of the sheet and found my name and phone number already included in the alphabetized list. During the twenty-minute drive from the Bar Harbor airport to the Kamp Kippy grounds, she confided that she named her only child, Joanna. She lost her before birth and never had any other children. Suddenly the air in the minivan felt stifling.
* * *
As Natalie and I are nearing Kippy's Elverson estate, having had hours to replay my interview with Kippy in Maine, I begin to think I am making a huge mistake. It's too late now. Once you're driving somewhere with cats, it's too late. Once you've forwarded your mail to a new state, it's over. Natalie is waving from her car window ahead, breaking my meditation on regret. She has to pee again. We pull over into a gas station. I'll throw away this empty McDonald's fries container when she's inside, I decide.
As we exit the Pennsylvania Turnpike en route to Conestoga Road, we pass a road called Joanna Road, followed by a sign reading, Joanna Township. I nearly drive off the side of the road as I beep and point to the sign. Natalie doesn't notice any of this. Did Kippy name her baby after this place? Or did she name this road and town? Too much to think about right now, I tell myself.
* * *
Kippy's central base of operations is a 250-acre estate in Elverson, a tiny borough of Chester County, an hour northeast of Philadelphia. If you're trying to appear posh, you might just say it's near West Chester. In reality, it's closer to Amish Country than it is to the Main Line. In Elverson, you are more likely to run into Mike with the Harley Davidson tattoos at the Musket Inn than you are to Bitsy and Trey from the tennis club. But even in Elverson, there are exclusive enclaves of pristine countryside and storybook colonial architecture, and this is exactly where my sister and I find ourselves on this hot afternoon in late September.
We turned onto the long gravel driveway of Kippy's property. Our cars are suddenly surrounded by chickens, slowing us down and escorting us to the first stop. The driveway opens to a circular parking area in front of a stone guest house. I recognize it from the photos Kippy sent me—this will be my new home base. Cookie, Kippy's assistant, calls me from the main house and tells us to unpack the cars and then head down to the main house.
The guest house is a former toll house, a well-preserved 1716 colonial Georgian built with locally quarried stone laid in courses of irregular height and wide plank floors. The first floor has a kitchen with a small row of Ikea cabinets and appliances across from the enormous original fireplace once used for cooking. Beyond that is a small living room with four windows. Up a narrow flight of wooden stairs is a wide hallway containing a clawfoot bathtub, a small closet converted into a half-bathroom, and two small bedrooms. My predecessor has left me her most of her furniture and kitchen wares.
It doesn't take us long to unload, and the cats are already exploring the house. The chickens are patiently waiting for us on the porch. We follow them further down the driveway. Along the way, we pass a newly built structure with stalls surrounded by a large grassy area and a chain-link fence. Kippy's husband, Clint Swingle, greets us. He's nice enough but rough around the edges. "I don't do the art stuff," he says. "I look after the kennel and the dog breeding business." He tells us he met Kippy in the '80s on the dog breeding circuit in Texas. My sister asks a few too many questions about the eating habits of the black labs I can see he's had enough of us already when he says, "Well, Kippy will be wondering where you are. I better not keep you." The chickens had already given-up on us, and I could see them far down the path ahead.
We continue down the driveway, and the chickens head directly to the coop. To the right of the coop is an enormous stone barn, to the left of the coop is Kippy's Pennsylvania Dutch country manor. Cookie is waving us over to the barn, so we head in that direction.
From the outside, the colonial barn looks as if it might house 18th century farming implements. The inside was transformed into climate-controlled art storage, an office, a reception room, a kitchen, and a vast exhibition space with floor to ceiling windows looking out over fenced pastures, ponds, and woods. After a quick tour, Cookie leads us into the cramped office space. It's a veritable retrospective of equipment – a giant Xerox machine, eight large computer monitors, landlines with the kind of caller ID devices you might see in an assisted living brochure, with several fax machines actively engaged in sending or receiving. The walls are plastered with phone lists for every location – A.S.A.P., the FWM, West Palm Beach house staff, Rittenhouse Square house staff, Dog Trainers, Veterinarians, Artists & Curators—all typed in navy blue Arial 14-point font. I notice jars of blue felt tip pens at each of the four workstations. All around the office are piles of unopened gadgets -- digital cameras, more cell phones, computer hardware of every size, make and model. Kippy is on one cell phone with a pile of cell phones in front of her on the desk – at least two of them are ringing.
Noticing Cookie enter the office, Kippy leans back, pulling the bottom of her phone away from her mouth, "Cookie, did you call?"
"I faxed."
"You didn't fax if you didn't call afterward to confirm."
Frustrated, Cookie says, "I called. Twice."
Kippy continues talking on her cell phone. Cookie introduces us to Fred, the office parrot, who has just eaten a fly and isn't feeling well, and her hand is shaking as she tries to refill Fred's water. When she spills most of it on the floor, she tells us it's because her Parkinson's Disease has gotten a lot worse this summer.
"Oh Freddy, baby, why did you eat that?" Kippy asks, still in the middle of her phone call. "No. I'm talking to my bird, go on," she snaps at the person on the phone.
Natalie is helping Cookie clean up the water causing Kippy to notice my sister in the room. I am immediately nervous. If this were a Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom episode, Marlin Perkins would voiceover: The dominant law of the wild kingdom is 'kill or be killed,' so every animal must be prepared for attack and defense. Kippy, despite being in her mid-60's and in apparent poor health, is a predatory tiger. Natalie, even though she is nine years older than me with the muscle-tone of Madonna, is now the baby deer in the Serengeti. I saw the way Kippy worked over her new summer interns for sport at Kamp Kippy. I already know it's how she tests people, just because she can. If Kippy's call ends and Natalie tries to make innocent and nervous small talk by asking Kippy if her chickens eat a grain-free diet, Kippy will go in for the kill. I have to get Natalie back to Buffalo. It's all I can do to ensure my survival.
Thankfully, another landline rings. Cookie tells Kippy it's the Pérez Art Museum Miami calling. They want to make shipping arrangements to return her Bill Viola piece that was on loan for an exhibition. Another phone rings. It's Takaaki Matsumoto wanting her to book the helicopter to take some aerial shots of Kamp Kippy for a book. Cookie continues to hover around Kippy like a worker bee armed with blue felt pens. More phones ring. More fax transmission reports roll in.
Relief comes in the form of a stretch limousine pulling up to the barn. I look out the window and notice a man in a Versace shirt emerge from the back. Kippy, now on three separate phone calls, shouts, "Jean-Jacques is here!" Jean-Jacques has come from New York to cut everyone's hair. More importantly, I can see that he has lifted Kippy's mood, and she insists that Natalie and I receive haircuts while she assigns me my first tasks, but we manage to excuse ourselves to unpack and get groceries. She relents. "Tomorrow is another day!" Kippy says, getting back to one of her cell phones. Tomorrow is Saturday, I think to myself. Can I have the weekend to catch my breath before this madness begins?
Natalie and I walk back up the driveway to the Toll House and head out to find a restaurant where we can split a bottle of wine and gossip about everything we just witnessed. I still haven't had a chance to tell Natalie about Joanna Township, let alone Kippy's baby Joanna. I don't know how I'll survive here without my sister.
* * *
By Monday, Natalie is back in Buffalo, and I am preparing for a 12:30 pm flight to Bar Harbor for a meeting with the staff at Kamp Kippy. But Kippy announces we are driving instead, staying for over two weeks, and traveling with a black lab named Rabbit. Rabbit has just bred three times, is quite sleepy, and requires the entire back of the Volvo SUV. Since we can't take my cats, Cookie will look after them in the Toll House. Cookie. Cookie, who let Fred the parrot, get sick on a house fly and then spilled his water. The thought of Cookie taking care of my animals for a month pains me beyond words, but I had no say in the matter.
After two hours of pure logistical chaos with Cookie and Clint and Fred and the chickens and Rabbit and the cell phones, I am off to Mt. Desert Island with Kippy.
"I will be back for you, I promise," I tell my cats in a tearful farewell.
Mt. Desert Island, ME
The nice thing about the road trip from Elverson to Maine with Kippy and Rabbit, aside from the breathtaking pastoral vistas and a few museum stops, were the remote stretches with no cell service. Only then would Kippy's three active phones stop burning, and I was afforded the quiet contemplation to plan the first staff meeting. If Kippy was in a good mood, which she often was, despite her overall manic state, she was a charming travel companion, full of terrific stories of her upbringing. She told me about how her nickname came from a family friend, Richard "Kippy" Du Pont, her early days at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and how she launched her museum. She was a brilliant and engaging conversationalist, sharing philosophical reflections about art and life in general. I began to feel reassured about my decision to accept this job as we road past grassy fields and rugged coast in the peaceful light of the low descending sun.
* * *
The first night on Mt. Desert Island was spent at Kippy's ancestral summer home at Schoolhouse Ledge in Northeast Harbor. It’s a ten-bedroom, 8-bathroom wood-framed cottage with a steep-pitched gable roof. Perched on a densely wooded hillside, the house has multiple sitting porches offering views of the Southwest and Northeast Harbors. It smells of pine trees and old money.
Schoolhouse Ledge, Fred Savage, architect, 1900
We were greeted by Clint – who had miraculously appeared from Pennsylvania as if he'd been here all along – busily preparing our late dinner. Birds Eye frozen broccoli with cheese, and hamburgers, which seems to be a standard weeknight dinner for all WASP households of a certain generation. From the kitchen, where I am making awkward small talk with Clint while filling water glasses, we hear Kippy screaming from her bedroom.
"Cheryl!!! Bring me with Windex!"
Cheryl is the Cookie of Maine and the Schoolhouse Ledge equivalent of a Victorian-era lady in waiting, equal parts housekeeper and therapist. Cheryl runs through the kitchen to grab the Windex from the pantry. She's done this before. There is more screaming and thumping around upstairs.
"Spray it there! And there! And here! Did you get it? Is it dead? Are you sure?," we hear Kippy directing.
"It's just a spider," Clint reassures me. "Why don't you bring them the mint leaves and tape?", he adds, pointing to a tray on the counter.
Puzzled, I head upstairs with the reinforcements. Cheryl is on her knees with a roll of blue painter's tape, covering the gaps between the floorboards and the molding. Kippy instructs me to divide the mint leaves between the dresser and the nightstand and to tape the gaps in the window where any spider could enter.
"I am terrified of spiders. If I see another one, we'll have to go to one of the other houses tonight," Kippy tells me.
Kippy is quiet over dinner. Clint and I exchange stories about how each of our families was in the business of dairy farming, somehow finding our way to the topic of Czechoslovakian glass, the coke ovens of Bethlehem Steel, and the Detroit mafia, before Kippy gets up from the table.
"Tomorrow is another day," she says as she headed up to bed.
I fall asleep that night, wondering how she became so phobic about spiders having grown up in the Maine woods.
* * *
In the morning light Mt. Desert Island is even more beautiful than I remembered from my first trip. The small office of Schoolhouse Ledge is already buzzing by 8 am. Kippy is on the phone with a Sotheby's real estate agent. Cheryl is taping the gaps in the office windows. Candyce, Kippy's secretary, is talking to the landscaper about cutting more branches away from the house. Everyone pauses for a moment to make fun of me for wearing a skirt. Kippy tosses me a set of keys.
"This is your Maine car. Candyce, get her the keys to the Town Hill house. I'm going to a dog show until Monday so you can just get settled and think about big picture things," Kippy says before returning to her call.
I feel immediate relief having a few days off from the all-encompassing intensity of Kippy, and I have the rest of the week to ease into Maine life. First, I settle into my Town Hill seasonal residence, a five-bedroom, four-bathroom house surrounded by tall wildflowers that feel lonely to me. It's way more space than I need or was expecting. It's not one of Kippy's coastal properties that would at least allow me to watch sailboats or see an occasional person strolling the beach. Maine nights are pitch black and quiet in a way I have never experienced, having grown up in a city with dense housing. The stars are spectacular, but I've seen so many creepy guys driving pickup trucks on the island's backroads, I am not about to sit outside alone at night.
The next morning, I head to the Kamp Kippy base at Shore Cottage in my new seasonal car - a 1995 Volvo station wagon. Shore Cottage consists of a lecture space, designed by post-modern architects Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates (VSBA), attached to a renovated indigenous shingle cottage turned into the programming office and dining room. At peak season, the space might hold as many as eighty people, between resident artists, guest artists, curators, museum directors, writers, and staff.
A.S.A.P. artist talk structure + indigenous shingle cottage, Mt. Desert Island, ME, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, c. 1998
I reacquaint myself with the programming staff who I met briefly during my interview. At the time, I found them to be sullen, snobby, and almost cult-like as a group. They shared inside jokes and furtive eye gestures, and none of them were particularly welcoming or generous with their time or knowledge. Maybe they'd seen so many Assistant Curators come and go they couldn't possibly be bothered to be friendly. Perhaps they looked down on me because I didn't attend Brown or Williams or possess the same level of cultivated ennui. Maybe they were protective of Kippy. Based on anecdotes during my road trip with Kippy to Maine, they had all been the recipient of Kippy's generosity, whether she had paid off their student loans, or secured them a future position with a prestigious museum. Whatever the case, my reception was equally weird and blasé on my first workday at Kamp Kippy. Taliya, Maggie, Collyn, and Ole, all paid interns for the past four summers, maintained their exclusive bohemian art coven as if I wasn't there, saying nothing to me unless I asked a direct question.
Meanwhile, like Cookie in Elverson or Cheryl and Candyce at Schoolhouse Ledge, they buzzed around like bees answering myriad phones, packing boxes, unpacking boxes, sending faxes to Kippy at her hotel, and immersed in the urgency of matters like sourcing Clint's favorite brand of sauerkraut. I notice that each of them talks to Kippy on the phone multiple times. "She likes us to check-in. A lot.," Taliya offers in a rare moment of generosity. There are those ubiquitous phone lists in navy blue Arial 14-point font posted all over the office walls.
A.S.A.P. hosts three lecture and dinner events each week, the rest of the time allowing artists and guests to work in private houses scattered around the island or gather to play softball on the lawn of the Deer Acres site or go sailing. There is no website. You can't apply for a residency. You are invited, personally, in a cell phone call from Kippy, and then provided with airplane tickets or a rental car, and a house to live and work in for the entire season. Some artists return multiple times; others are never invited back or spoken of again. I heard a story about a prominent museum director who once skipped one of Kippy's daytime unofficial routine events – the sailboat ride and a lobster picnic on Little Cranberry Island. Opting to play softball with his son and a few of the invited curators instead, Kippy banished him from the island almost immediately for his etiquette faux pas. You're either in, or you're out.
James Edward Buttersworth (1817-1894), A Gaff Rigged Racing Cutter
Tonight's Kamp Kippy artist talk and lobster dinner includes New Museum Director, Lisa Phillips, the architect of the soon-to-be build Bowery location of the New Museum, Ryue Nishizawa; sculptural artist, Ingrid Bachman; installation and performance artist, Li Mingwei; Trenton Doyle Hancock, best known for his drawings; and the celebrated artist power couple, satirical figurative painter, John Currin whose work fetches over twelve million dollars at auction, and his wife, sculptor Rachel Feinstein. Each of the guests of honor gives a short talk while Collyn and Ole operate the sound and lights, and Taliya and Maggie serve wine and water.
Kippy calls in from her dog show for the 800th time, this time asking for me. She tells me she has announced to the A.S.A.P. staff that I am their new boss, and, orchestrating the evening even from her far-flung location, she wants me to sit next to John and Rachel at dinner. I sense seething resentment from the Kamp Kippy coven, and I take my seat, making awkward dinner conversation about Buffalo and cats. Everyone at my table gives me a raised eyebrow while sucking air in through their teeth: "Oh, you've just started working for Kippy? Good luck!" I was grateful when Mingwei's partner, a Berkeley neuropsychiatrist hypnotized us as a post-dinner parlor trick.
* * *
Over the next twenty days at Kamp Kippy, there would be many more artist talks and dinners, many more sailing and lobster lunches, and many more late nights when I returned to Town Hill in my summer Volvo, only to eat a bag of chips for dinner and cry myself to sleep. I came to realize my job was nothing more than an exercise in futility, punctuated by sending faxes, typing to-do lists, and "checking-in" with Kippy by phone if we were apart for more than an hour. I'd fall asleep hearing the words, Did you call to make sure they got the fax? If you didn't call, you didn't fax. When I closed my eyes, I saw office walls plastered in navy blue Arial 14-point font, replaying Taliya's warning: It upsets Kippy to see lists in any other font. I'd wake up in the middle of the night replaying check-in calls to Kippy. Had I reassured her enough like a dutiful therapist?
I still hadn't "done" anything pertaining to curatorial work, let alone any planning for the next A.S.A.P. season. Days were frantic, as we all rode the ever-changing waves of Kippy's moods and needs. In perhaps the pinnacle of my accomplishments during the entire time there, I packed artworks by Richard Tuttle, Georgia O'Keefe, and Arthur Dove, and I rode around in a helicopter with Takaaki scouting photo angles for his book about A.S.A.P. My usual tasks involved moving Kippy's toasters from house to house, reacting to spider sightings, picking up her medications at the Bar Harbor Rite Aid, following her into gourmet shops or bathrooms while holding her speakerphone and multiple muted cell phones, listening to her when she vented about which staff member she was considering firing, and making endless task lists in navy blue Arial 14-point font.
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), The Barns, Lake George
One afternoon, while I was working from the Schoolhouse Ledge office with Cheryl and Candyce, instead of Shore Cottage with the coven, Kippy's friend and confidant, Roger Conover, head of MIT Press, came at her request to soothe her anxiety about something. I brought Roger a glass of water, and when Kippy went inside to take a call, he asked me how my new job was going. Just like the dinner guests with the raised eyebrows on my first night, and so many other guests in between, Roger seemed intent on gently steering the conversation toward Kippy's challenging nature. But this was the first time I trusted someone enough to let my face show my true thoughts. I barely said a word, fearing Kippy's impending return to the porch. He looked at me and said, "You know, you just have to figure out if you are strong enough to handle her. It's a lot, I understand."
That night I had a friend fly in from Buffalo. Kippy very graciously offered her premier property on the island. Canoes, bobbing porpoises, a gourmet kitchen, a great big stone fireplace, a bearskin rug, and the kind of very fine shaker furniture that one inherits through generational wealth – it was a dream vacation spot. That night I saw more stars in the sky than I could ever imagine existed in the universe. Roger's words were still in my head…you just have to figure out if you are strong enough to handle her. The truth is, I wasn't strong enough to deal with Kippy. It hadn't yet been a full month, and I knew I had to get back to Elverson, load up my cats, and escape.
The next morning, I called Kippy—even though it's a Sunday—because that is what I am already programmed to do. It occurred to me that I have become one of the black labs she breeds and trains, performing tricks with cell phones and faxes and fonts. I can't tell her what I thought about under last night's canopy of stars while I'm luxuriating in her great, great grandfather's cabin eating leftover lobster for breakfast. We're heading back to Elverson soon anyway, I'll tell her then, I decide.
Kippy is frantic on the phone. Crying. One of her former A.S.A.P. assistants has to get a restraining order against her abusive boyfriend in Bar Harbor, and Kippy is having her lawyers help. She goes on to tell me she is so upset because it stirred up memories of a violent fight with Clint when he kicked her in the head. "I had two black eyes, and I lost partial hearing," she confided. After the incident, Kippy divorced him. They reconciled soon after though they never remarried, officially. We talk at length about this, and I attempt to comfort her. She turns the conversation to offering plane tickets for any of my friends who want to visit in the future.
And that's the thing I realize about Kippy: she's intuitive, bordering on the clairvoyant. She sensed I was having doubts about my job since the day of Roger's visit. Maybe even before. The cabin, the plane tickets, the confession. This is how she keeps her circle of people. I am a trained black lab. Now I am loyal. I am an unsuspecting deer in the Serengeti. Now I am prey.
* * *
Kippy calls me the next morning to say Clint has left already to return to Elverson with Rabbit. She asks me to pack up Town Hill and stay with her at Schoolhouse Ledge because she is afraid to stay there alone. It's only one night, I tell myself, as if I could say no to her anyway.
On the road trip back to Elverson, we make several stops, giving my left ear a much-needed respite from Kippy's constant stream of speakerphone yelling. She found out her cousin bought a second country house without paying her back the money she loaned him to buy his New York apartment, and there are a few calls about this. I begin to wonder if I will have permanent hearing loss. In Massachusetts, we visit the Addison Gallery at Phillips Andover Academy, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Clark Art Institute.
Kippy uses her cell phone on top-volume speaker as we tour the museums, but nobody would dare say a word about it. I sense some of the museum directors welcome her more out of a sense of duty than enjoyment, and because she knows this, she's not about to concern herself with decorum.There is a certain look of trepidation in their eyes as they greet her. This is often accompanied by restrained exasperation as they try to keep up with her battery of questions. But mostly, there is a kind of genuine affection. People in the arts either tolerate or expect a certain level of eccentricity, and Kippy, despite her often audacious behavior, is also uniquely insightful, quick-witted, and warmhearted.
At MASS MoCA we saw Cai Guo-Qiang's monumental work, Inopportune. Set in a space big enough to park a Boeing 747, the installation includes nine hyper-realistic, life-size tiger replicas. Suspended at various angles like a stop-action view of a hunt, each tiger is contorting in agony, pierced by dozens of arrows. It was a jaw-dropping sight that I could not help but relate to on a very personal and visceral level. We know the tigers are fake and do not feel pain. But because they look so realistic, we feel the pain. The arrows are piercing us. We are the prey.
Cai Guo-Qiang, Inopportune (Stage Two), 2004 © 2004, courtesy of MASS MoCA
Pine Street, Rittenhouse-Fitler Square, Philadelphia, PA
I want to stay in bed all day and hug my cats. But by 8 am, I'm already walking down the long gravel driveway, accompanied by two chickens, from the Toll House to the barn. I've only been back in Elverson for two nights, but I have to go to Philadelphia with Kippy for the Teresita Fernández opening at the FWM. Kippy will be making remarks, and there will be a dinner downtown after the opening. I'll stay over in Philadelphia that night, giving me a chance to test drive my future accommodations next spring, Kippy's Rittenhouse-Fitler Square apartment at Pine and 24th. The following day we'll travel to New York. Kippy offered to put me up in a hotel so I can spend some time with my friends there, and she has some gallery meetings set up in Chelsea. The best-laid plans.
As soon as I enter the barn, Cookie introduces me to Gabrielle, who, I am told, is there to interview as my new assistant. How can I have an assistant when I still don't even understand what my job is? What will she do, exactly, hold more cell phones? Kippy is fully engrossed in her speakerphone, squawking orders at Taliya and Collyn about closing down the A.S.A.P. cottages. On another speakerphone, Kippy's vet is patiently waiting for her to address the very bulging belly of Gabby, the black lab, who got pregnant while we were away in Maine.
Kippy is unusually agitated today. Two hours go by, and Gabrielle is still waiting and twirling her hair while Cookie and I follow Kippy from barn to house and back several times as she barks commands. When she has to pee, we are made to go into the bathroom with her, holding cell phones and clipboards and mail and faxes. There is no break. Cookie has been following Kippy around with her Issy Miyake ensemble for the reception, waiting for her to make sure it still fits. I'm expecting Jean-Jacques to jump out of a limo at any moment to do Kippy's hair. Kippy hands me my first paycheck from the toilet. I notice my name is misspelled, and I still haven't had time off to set up a bank account in Pennsylvania.
"There's no time for that," Kippy snarled.
Gabrielle, who has now spent the entire day waiting in the barn, now has to leave to catch her train, or she'll be stranded in Elverson all weekend. I speak with her for 4.3 minutes about the job, just flying off the cuff. We get into Kippy's town car at 4 pm. We are two hours late to the opening, but Kippy pulls off her remarks. At the post-reception dinner, I notice Kippy is on a high, as the announcement of Teresita Fernández becoming a MacArthur Fellow is now public.
Teresita Fernandez, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, Fire, 2005.
* * *
My phone rings two mornings later at the Paramount Hotel in New York. Kippy must have crashed pretty hard after the adrenaline rush of the Teresita Fernández opening. She sounds under the influence of something. A sedative maybe. I can't be sure. I've never asked her about the prescriptions she takes. She just sounds very off today, more than ever. Her driver will pick me up at 10 am, she tells me. It's Saturday, and we previously agreed that I would have the day off to spend time with my friends while she met with some gallerists. I gently remind her that I have plans, and we should just meet Sunday morning when we return to Elverson.
"Well, I thought you studied art history?"
"Of course, I did." I am laughing, nervously. She must be joking.
"Well, if all you want to do is play with your friends, then I don't think you can work for me."
She hung up the phone. I was stunned. Even for her. I was not prepared for this reaction, even after all her eccentric and erratic behavior over the last month. I decided to let it breathe. She called back a few minutes later.
"I had another call. I'm going to meet with James Cohan and taking the car back to Elverson. I'll see you there on Monday." She hung up again.
I checked out of the hotel and walked to Penn Station to figure out how to buy a train ticket back to Elverson. It was pouring rain, and I didn't have an umbrella. I didn't have ten dollars to buy an umbrella since I hadn't been paid in over a month. The battery of my LG flip phone died. I got a ticket for a 6:55 pm return, but it was only 9:30 am. Someone at Penn Station left a bag unattended, and the FBI swooped in to evacuate the area. I walked back out into the rain. Was I going to lose my job? This weighed much heavier on my mind than the swarm of FBA agents and police dogs. I was able to call a friend on a payphone and make plans to meet for breakfast in Lower Manhattan, which ended up being two-for-one margaritas. My clothes were still soaking wet when I finally made it back to Elverson on the Amtrak.
* * *
I hear a knock on the Toll House door. It's 7:30 am. I walk downstairs and see Clint through the window. I already know what he will say, but I just let him speak. He had an envelope in his hand.
"Joanna, Kippy asked me to tell you to go back to Buffalo. She wanted me to give you this $300 cash to cover your expenses. You're a nice girl. I'm sorry this happened. My wife…she has problems. Sometimes she doesn't leave her bedroom for weeks. I'm sorry."
I don't remember what I said. Even though I knew why he was knocking on the door, it was still a shock to hear the words. All I can remember is that I thanked him and told him I would leave that morning.
After a few minutes of crying, I called Kippy's cell phone. She didn't answer. I thought I should check in one last time.
I drove to the Elverson Walmart, just past Joanna Township and Joanna Road, to get boxes and packing tape. When I got back, Clint was at the door again with FedEx labels, and he offered to ship anything that wouldn't fit in my Volkswagen. I said goodbye to the chickens and was on the road back to Buffalo with my cats by noon.
Irving Place, Buffalo, NY
Home in Buffalo to lick my wounds. I would sleep on an air mattress in a walk-in closet at Natalie's house until Jimmy graciously agreed to end his sublet early and give me my apartment back.
Natalie made me a salad. I didn't admit to eating McDonald's fries on the way home.
I cried a lot that month at Natalie's. But I'm a survivor. Just like Destiny's Child. Just like Kippy always said, "Tomorrow is another day."
Kippy
It had been years since I thought about Kippy or that crazy month in Pennsylvania and Maine. I hadn't thought about Toll House or Town Hill or the chickens, or any of it. At the time, the whole episode felt traumatic. But, like so many difficult things, in the grand scheme of my life, this was a blip. Any arrow wounds long healed. I started my art consulting business, cycled through a few boyfriends, and moved apartments several more times.
At one point in maybe 2010, prompted by the FWM newsletter, I Googled A.S.A.P. just to see if it was still going. It's almost as if it never existed! The whole culture of that program is almost shrouded in secrecy, and there is virtually no social media presence. I even laughed with my friends and wondered if the whole episode was just some kind of hallucinatory dream.
Then one early September morning in 2015, a friend shared an Artnet article on Facebook that stopped me in my tracks:
Tributes Pour in for Beloved Art Patron Marion 'Kippy' Boulton Stroud, Who Tragically Took Her Own Life.
News of the death of pioneering art patron, artist and generous philanthropist Marion "Kippy" Boulton Stroud, at her own hand, age 76, has left the art world shocked and bewildered, but the uncomfortable truth is that the news is not entirely unexpected.
Those who knew Stroud recall an extraordinarily generous philanthropist, talented artist, pioneering promoter of women artists, and fiercely individual thinker. She was, however, irascible, prone to outbursts, and struggled recently with the dangerous and still little-understood disease of depression.
According to sources close to the family, Stroud returned to her home in Northeast Harbor, Maine, on Saturday, August 22, after a party, and took her own life. This was a family home, which she loved and opened to artists, curators, art writers and museum directors around the world for decades.
I sat in silence with this news. I felt sick.
Oh, Kippy. Right inside Schoolhouse Ledge. My god. What happened at the party? Maybe it was like the night at the FW&M opening in 2005? Maybe it was all too much. The houses. The staff. The abusive husband. The baby. The spiders. The pain.
I read the article a few times before focusing on the photograph of Kippy. Piercing blue eyes with her quintessential accessories – the Patagonia vest, the two watches. I replay my brief but intense time with her. I recall her complexity. Brilliant. Generous. Mercurial.
I think about this a lot. What did she need from me that Sunday in Manhattan? It wasn't about work. It never was. It's not why she hired me at all. She needed a friend. It's so clear to me now, but at the time, I just felt like I was in an abusive employer/employee relationship. This was also true. Still, I wish I could go back in time and spend that Sunday with her in Manhattan.
I look at the photograph again. I notice she has three rolls of blue painter's tape on her wrist. Kippy, wherever you are, the spiders don't stand a chance.
