Verbal Description: Long Line

Narrator: In a narrow rectangular gallery, twenty-five brightly-colored, plywood chairs are scattered like confetti across the blond wood flooring of the Museum. The chairs are compact and cheery looking due to their bright colors. Minimalist in design, each chair has a solid cube-like base that is low to the ground. The seat, however, slopes down - urging its sitter to scoot all the way back in their seat; knees ever so slightly elevated. Some of the chairs have two skinny armrests, while others have none. Mary Heilmann titled the work Monochrome possibly referring to the fact that each chair is painted one solid color: vibrant yellow, deep red, lime green, dark magenta, medium blue, and robin’s egg blue.

On the east side of the gallery, the wall that faces outward towards the window is Long Line, a mural painted by the same artist. It is just over seventeen feet tall, and stretches across three walls with a combined length measuring just under 90 feet. The mural, which is a presentation of a painting from 2020 of the same name, extends along the wall, with corridors flanking it at each end. A part of it continues on the southernmost wall, which is shaped like an L. The mural is abstract but resembles a giant ocean wave seen head-on; a long blue-green swath floats in between washy pale stretches. The  lighter area seems to be created with thick, gestural brush strokes that contrast with the more solid blue-green. At the bottom of the mural is another dark swath beginning to emerge as the mural wraps around to the narrower south wall.

Heilmann made the painting Long Line in the early part of the COVID pandemic, when she resided mostly on Long Island, noting that she would take daily walks along the Atlantic beaches there. On the west side of the gallery is a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto the Hudson river. If one were to make their way down the gallery, traveling from chair to chair, you might become dizzy shifting your attention between the tumbling green ocean waters of the mural to the shimmering light skimming the Hudson river, whose waters eventually meet the ocean that inspired the mural.