“Do you come here a lot?”
Woman 1: Yes, depends what’s on.
“Do you guys always come together?”
Woman 2: No, very rarely. This is maybe one of the first times we have come together. We do other places together.
“What do you both do?”
Woman 2: I’m a retired graphic designer, now I work in my studio and paint and do art. I do mixed media, abstract stuff.
“Do you have an idol, a painter you look up to?”
Woman 2: My favorite painter? Richard Dunn. He’s got one here. They move it around; right now, I think it’s above the stairwell, but sometimes it is in here.
Woman 1: I was an editor, and still editing, but I’m working now on my family memoirs, and I’m studying art.
“Are you learning dirty secrets about your family?”
Woman 1: No … they’re surprising, but not nasty secrets.
“Has that been an intense experience?”
Woman 1: Very. Yesterday, I received something translated from Polish, and I read it, and it wasn’t that anything was new to me, but it was my father having been interviewed at one time. It must have been published in Poland, and not here. So, it’s very emotional, some days it’s a little rough to work through.
“But you don’t regret it?”
Woman 2: Not at all, not at all. And I’m studying collage and assemblage here, in an art class [at the Arts Council of Princeton].
“What do you think about it?”
Woman 1: Oh – I’ve been doing it forever! I’ve been making collages since I was a child. I started when I was a kid. I have work that I did when I was a kid.
“And you saved it?”
Woman 2: Yeah.
“Do you think it’s good?”
Woman 2: I think it was ahead of its time. Well, , so I’ve kept it and schlepped it. So yeah, there’s a lot in this exhibit [City Lost and Found] that appeals to me, since I’m taking classes at the Arts Council.
Photo and Interview by Jane Urheim and Pleasant Garner