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<\/a>This morning, I was remembered how I fell for\u00a0Hennessy Youngman<\/a>. \u00a0Remember him? \u00a0The artist, Jayson Musson, created an alternate persona, an hip-hop urban art historian. \u00a0HY was so<\/em> perfect. \u00a0So refreshing, finally someone like me, informed on art, yet with ghetto flair. \u00a0He wore funny hats, baseball caps, with Elmo or Spiderman Eyes. \u00a0That alone should have tipped me off to the fact that the Penn University MFA was spoofing his audience, playing with expectations, making a cunning statement about racial stereo typing.<\/p>\n Yet, at the end-of-the day I’m a girl from Washington Heights, a child of immigrants, who came to the United States convinced that they’d find a better life and they did. \u00a0I managed to attend and graduate from an Ivy league school with a degree in art history and just as incredibly I married and am married to Dr. Hartmuth Kolb<\/a>, from Germany. \u00a0Yes, I’m lucky. \u00a0I’m lucky that six years after the initial diagnosis, losing my breasts, undergoing so many surgeries, metastasis to the brain, grand mal seizure, brain surgeries, heart surgery (to correct the birth defect that would have done me in, at birth, if I hadn’t been born 2.2 pounds, three months<\/p>\n premature.) the whole enchilada, and I’m still here.<\/p>\n Fact: it isn’t easy. \u00a0I’m a mother, taking care of children, making sure that they stay on-track with their studies and HAPPY. \u00a0I can’t afford to be morose. \u00a0I have to focus my energy on happiness, on love, on continuing to learn and laugh. \u00a0Hennessy Youngman, came to me at a time when I was very active on the edges of a fast moving and apparently amorphous art world. \u00a0I was going to Art Fairs, documenting the journeys, and participating in a quest to understand contemporary art, and get out of my art historical comfort zone. \u00a0I was painting, pushing to sell pieces, and participating in group exhibitions to whatever degree was possible. \u00a0In short, I became an emerging artist just as the cancer was threatening to call a lights out for me.<\/p>\n I’m convinced that most people seeing me, including my doctors, have a hard time reconciling the fact of how I look (young for my age) and my medical history. \u00a0I was pumped up by fuzzy ambition and desire to participate in this Art game. \u00a0I extended myself via on-line channels and come into communication with art critic, Jerry Saltz, on-line along with countless others. \u00a0I felt as though I’d found my tribe and was finally “Home,” among others passionately invested in the art field.<\/p>\n Low and behold, I felt entirely too comfortable and really had no guard up. \u00a0I was making a spectacle of myself and it was fun. \u00a0I met a number of very cool and some absolutely insane artists, because as you know, the two seem to be inextricably mixed, madness and creativity, I mean. \u00a0Moving quickly, I started to see behind the curtains of the art world, at one fair I attended a talk with the head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the head of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. \u00a0At the same fair I briefly met, Jeffrey Deitch<\/a>, and impertinently asked him if it was true he was, “leaving MoCa.” \u00a0He denied the rumor and then, “resigned,” about a month later.<\/p>\n