RADAR 3 Publication Date: December 3, 2002 Addiction Long ago, I decided to retire my college ways. No more exhibition posters or bad reproductions. Being surrounded by original artwork was a family value, and I set about my life's pursuit. In the late seventies, work by a street vendor near MOMA held some appeal for $30; then he moved up by the Met and became less affordable. At an artists' co-op, I found an oil pastel that reminded me of my sisters. I purchased an abstraction at a gallery sale for $75. There were pieces from shops in the East Village, a papier mache dog with writing all over it. It has been nonstop. Where art can be purchased, my nerves are tuned for a work I must own. Once I fell in love with an unaffordable piece. I told the gallery owner that I thought the work was underpriced. When I got home, I called to buy the work and he said he'd taken my advice. For years, it was my most expensive acquisition. Now I own paintings, sculpture, prints, primitive and visionary art. I cannot stop, nor do I wish to. Collecting is as important to me as breathing—the memories, emotions and pedagogy the art holds. I can never afford it. As a friend asked last week: "food or art?" Nancy Haragan