We're very involved in each other's work and are sort of a mutual admiration/mutual support society. Boosters of each other. When I had my show at Boston City Hall, Ilene helped me set up a darkroom printing schedule for myself and dry-mounted all the final prints for me. At Harvard Business School she took a film course and for her major project made a ten-minute movie about me (called 'At Home, Elsa Dorfman']. Last year, on my birthday, she and Ed, her husband, did something very special. They found and bought a reliable second hand car for me. And somehow, because of the way they are, they made it very easy for me to accept the gift and to enjoy it. [Like a lot of people, I'm much more comfortable as a giver; presents can, if I'm not careful, provoke an argument over any obscure issue.)

Ilene's second store, The Big Picture, was my idea. I fell in love with the machine that made the instant posters, making sixty myself the day I discovered it. 'You have to do something with this machine; it's a gold mine,' I kept telling her. Every day for a year and a half. Not the least subtly. Finally, one morning she came over for breakfast and brought almond croissants. I knew something was up, though the croissants weren't necessarily the giveaway. 'Guess what,' she said, 'I'm beginning to think you might have something with that poster machine.' Six months later, she gave me 1 percent of the stock in the corporation and we opened a bottle of Mumm's champagne.

Readers' Comments (if you don't see anything below, try clicking here)