https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/karen-finley-performance-art-kembra-pfahler
The story of how we met deserves a retelling. One night in the apartment complex Darryl and I called Barcelona Heights, because it reminded us of the Spanish buildings we saw in Barcelona, the power went out. Darryl and I lived in adjacent rooms. Darryl emerged from his in a long nightshirt, carrying a copper holder and lit candle. He was to my mind Wee Willie Winkie.
We talked a while in the hallway. The power returned. I asked him if he had a VCR. "I am showing an artist to my class at the Atlanta College of Art," I told him. "I need an edited copy of a video I already have."
"Who's the artist?" Darryl asked.
"Karen Finley."
Not another person outside of ACA that I mentioned her to had ever heard of her. Darryl loved her work and her performances, he said. Yes, he would lend me his VCR to make the edited copy and wanted to see it when I was done.
Years later when we saw her performance in Atlanta of "Martha and George," we met her backstage and told her how our love began because of her. Laughing, she replied how charmed she was, how glad she had played such a part in our relationship.
After I had taped the copy, shown it to my eager class at ACA, Darryl and I watched the episodes over a glass of brandy. Thus began our romance.
_________
{ In 1990, the year that began our relationship, Karen Finley mounted her poem, “The Black Sheep,” cast in bronze right at the corner of Manhattan’s First Avenue and Houston Street. “We are the sheep with no shepherd,” she wrote. “We are the sheep with no straight and narrow. We are sheep who take the dangerous pathway thru the mountain range to get to the other side of our soul.”}
--From the Interview above.
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