The Hanging at Four Winds Hospital
By Gene Aronowitz
When I was Commissioner of Community Mental Health for Westchester County, I made a very large macramé sculpture for an employee art show. The piece was 96 inches long, far bigger than anything I had made up to that point. It was very complex and very delicate. When the show was over, I didn’t know what to do with it so I asked Four Winds Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Northern Westchester, with which I had a very positive relationship if they would like it. They did and I brought it up there and hung it.
One of my really big thrills resulted from this. I was at a party one night and began talking to an artist. I told her of my interest in macramé and she began to talk about a “magnificent” piece she had just seen. When she described it, it became clear to me that she was talking about my work. When I asked if she saw it at Four Winds, she said she did.
One night, I was hanging out with a friend and we went over to the hospital so I could show her the piece. I found that it had been moved because they needed to paint the room in which it originally hung. In moving it, some of the knots had slipped and some had gotten twisted. Since the piece was originally symmetrical, one side was now slightly but noticeably askew.
I tried to adjust the affected knots but it had really gotten twisted up. I decided to cut about an inch off the bottoms of these particular cords so it wouldn’t be as noticeable. A psychiatric nurse was walking by; I asked her if she had a pair of scissors. The rest of the conversation went something like this.
"What do you want with a pair of scissors?" she asked.
"I want to cut this. It’s a little askew."
"Oh, I see," she said, one eyebrow moving noticeably upward.
"Oh, it's OK," I said. "You see, I made this hanging.".
She looked at me, tilting her head a bit, and said "Sure!"
"No, really," I responded. "You see, I’m the Commissioner of Mental Health and I gave it to the hospital.
"Right," she exclaimed, putting her left hand on her hip.
She began to walk away and judging from the drift of the conversation, I imagined she went to tell some gargantuan psychiatric aides to come and get me back to my room. So I left.
The piece is probably still askew.
