A policeman stopped by to ask questions and fill out paperwork. That my left pant leg had been split up to my knee by the paramedics might have caught his eye. So, he wanted to know if I was involved in a traffic accident? No, an elephant sent me to the hospital. Most probably the officer was familiar with a recent incident at St. Paul’s Como Zoo. The story made front page in the papers. Two drunks had decided to wrestle a polar bear. It was night time, the zoo closed. The drunker of the two managed to climb into the bear’s enclosure. Sadly for the polar bear; the police, responding to screams, came to the rescue of the drunk. This Policeman could see that I was completely sober. So it must have been a mystery to him how I could have gotten tangled up with an elephant in Minneapolis, especially at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I was a twenty-five-year-old art handler for the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I had recently returned from Malibu, where I had been crating pai...

Alice Neel Said I Reminded Her of a Cat Before they met me people (might) have, thanks to my nickname, leapt to the seemingly logical assumption that since my artwork was wonderful, I was worthy to be a celebrated Woman Artist. Female artists such as Sandy Kinnee, deserve to be admired. I happened to have timed my entrance into the Art World better than M. E. O’Hare, who was a kick ass painter as well as being my aunt. When she was starting out in the 1940s, being a Woman Artist in a tiny gallery world designed for and run primarily by males, was not her choice. She chose the route of taking commissions and painting portraits. Her gender was obscured by her use of her initials. There were many women artists, few were taken seriously, despite the quality of their work. By the time I leapt into the first little puddle in the art world, there was an awareness that all along women had been making art and it was damn well time they be taken seriously. Women artists w...