Martha Wilson's vows, January 18, 1998 When I was a little girl, my father asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said, "A BRIDE!" About a quarter century after this, as a baby artist who took her personality to be her art medium, I planned--and then abandoned--a wedding ceremony at Tavern on the Green that was to be a performance of self-love that I didn't actually feel at the time. ( I also abandoned this performance extravaganza because the tab was the same number as my annual salary.)

Now I have hit 50. The statistical liklihood of being married for the first time is remote. So I thought a wedding would be fun, as well as a good excuse to see all of you.

Vince is the one for me. He passed all three tests set before him: He didin't get up, put his clothes on and leave the first night we were together when Comly woke up and crawled into bed with us. He didn't hang up on me when I called on April Fool's Day to say I wasn't menopausal, I was pregnant. And he's putting up with this deal so I can call myself a fishwife.

I am not accustomed to working in partnership, which members of Franklin Furnace's Board of Directors here today can attest to. Of course, I'm in a life partnership with my son, Comly Cook Wilson. Presently it is an unequal arrangement, but this changes with each second that passes. One Summer, I remember marveling at the skill with which my sister Callie and her husband Dan negotiated everything in their partnership, from whether to take out a second mortgage to who would get the butter out of the refrigerator--and thinking it looked much too hard to be a valid way of life. And indeed, as Vince and I were negotiating the text of the wedding invitation, it came to me that although I'm half a century on this Earth, partnership is a new and unfamiliar concept that will require some thought.

Life tends to be uncertain. We have chosen not to get legally married not only to preserve our independence, but also to restate our belief that change is the only constant. That said, I am the happiest girl in the world today. I have one or two more decades to complete my mission from God: To make the world safe for avant-garde art; and I am embarking on a new life, however tenuously connected, with Vince, the fishmonger, my equal partner.

33. Playbill designed by Carol Sun for the wedding deal on January 18, l998. Photo of Martha Wilson and Vince Bruns by Michael Katchen

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