Ever wondered what an Armory Week is like for a gallerist? Jessie Washburne-Harris, who runs the five-year-old New York gallery Harris Lieberman with her husband, Michael Lieberman, sat down with us in her Armory Show booth over the weekend to give us the run-down of her hectic schedule as the aisles around her teamed with the general public and the occasional art professional — most of the latter having dashed through the fair in its opening hours. (Though, as she noted, "there was an odd lack of curators at the fair throughout the week.") A little weary from the week's events but still capable of pausing our conversation to leap up and field any questions about her booth that came her way, Washburne-Harris told us about the challenges of multi-tasking, the real highlight of her week, and a piece in her booth that you might have missed.

Snow Show

The booth setup went smoothly, but the lead-up was a little harried. Our artist Matt Saunders had an opening at the Renaissance Society in Chicago on Sunday night, so we were there all weekend for a series of dinners and parties for him. We flew back to New York on Monday afternoon only to find out that because of last week's snowstorm, almost all of the works we'd be displaying in our booth at the Armory Show had been delayed in a shipment from Berlin, where Matt, and another of our artists, Matthias Dornfeld, are based. The shipment finally arrived at our gallery on Tuesday morning, and we raced to install the booth. But it all came together in the end, and we sold a number of things on opening day, including pieces by Matthias, Matt, and Simon Dybbroe Møller.

"Pay Attention to Me!"

One of the pieces we installed was a little complicated: Simon's site-specific installation of a thin border of mirrored glass that runs along the edges of the booth's walls. It's very subtle. Some savvy Armory Show visitors really get it, others pass right by. It's interesting to see how people go about looking at art at an art fair, and to try to figure out whether or not they're actually paying attention. You see them strolling along, as hundreds of images float past their eyeballs. At a different fair, like Art Basel, Simon's piece might get a little more attention, but the Armory Show is a very messy, loud fair with a lot of shiny, colorful art that says, "Pay attention to me!"

Divide and Conquer

Michael and I are fortunate in that there are two of us, so we can divide and conquer. We really tag-teamed this week. It was fun. We were in the booth together on opening day, but since then we've been alternating. We're both wearing a million different hats this week. Yesterday, for instance, one minute I'm going to a liquor store to get booze for the after-party for Simon's opening at our gallery last night — let's face it, an art fair is a means to an end, and it's much more gratifying to have a show in your gallery, where you can really let an artist have the space they need — then I'm back at the booth selling artwork, then I'm running to collectors Susan and Michael Hort's private preview at 6 p.m. — our artist Matthias Dornfeld has a fantastic installation there — even though our own opening was from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. I ended up missing half of my own opening, but Michael was there, and our colleague Bridget was at the fair.

Birthday Girl

I guess I was feeling a little sorry for myself earlier in the day yesterday, because it was my birthday, and with everything going on I thought that would get a little lost. But a friend of my mother's said to me, "What are you talking about? Everyone is going to come to your opening and say 'Happy Birthday.'" And she was right. During Armory Week there is so much energy and excitement, so when you have an opening at your gallery you get a wonderful mix of collectors and artists and curators and writers, exactly the kind of crowd you want to have. Afterwards, a collector hosted a party for Simon. This beautiful chocolate birthday cake came out. We had so many friends and colleagues there — I guess in some ways they are one and the same. Afterwards, I was putting some of the cake in my car to take home, but it slipped and most of it fell on the shoes of Roger Tatley, director at Alison Jacques gallery.

Dancing the Night Away

Later, 30 of us went to this trashy place on the Lower East Side called Speakeasy. It's one of the few places left in New York where you can still smoke, and all the Europeans loved that. We'd been there the night before, for artist Christian Jankowski's party. Jankowski had brought a DJ friend, but last night they wouldn't let us bring our own DJ, and we were stuck with the in-house DJ, who played about 80 percent salsa music. So we danced salsa until 3 a.m.

The Art of Multitasking

The joy of being a New York gallery and doing this fair is that you get to go home and sleep in your own bed. But not for very long. This morning my adorable two-year-old son woke up at 6:30 a.m. and wanted full-on mommy play time. He'd visited me the previous afternoon in the gallery with his nanny and brought cupcakes and sang me 'Happy Birthday' and played the piano we have in the gallery now as part of Simon's exhibition. That may have been the real highlight of my Armory Week. It's a funny thing being a small business owner and a mom, you have to constantly balance your roles. But it's similar to what we do as gallerists. For our artists, we are mom, cheerleader, accountant, archivist, and shrink, all in one.

Weekend Warrior

I think someone should do a documentary where they first film the set-up of an art fair, and capture the palpable energy, all the excitement that you can feel in the air, and then come back on Sunday night and film the fair after it's closed. It's like a deflated balloon. You see how all of this energy goes into something that is really so ephemeral. That will happen tomorrow. Right now, it's Saturday afternoon, and you can see there's a line out the door for the general public to get in. Not a lot of the people who were at the opening on Wednesday are circling back through a second time. We've done this fair four times now and it used to be that over the weekend people would come back around, but that's not happening this year because, between the Whitney Biennial and the Art Show, and the New Museum's show of Dakis Joannou's collection, and other things, there's so much else to see this week, so they are distracted. But it's very crowded today, with the public, and meanwhile, we gallerists are sitting in our booths, hung over and exhausted, having gotten three hours of sleep.

Sharing the Love

I finally got to walk around the fair this afternoon. I loved Guido Baudach's booth, where all of his artists did a different take on the subject of the nude. I also loved the booth where Tim Nye and Franklin Parrasch did a collaboration recreating the L.A. gallery Ferus. The 1964 Ken Price piece there is amazing. And Hannah Wilke's work is looking really good over at Alison Jacques. You should go and take a look. And while you're there, check out Roger Tatley's shoes. They probably still have chocolate cake on them.

Fair Enough

What's been fantastic about this week is that, while we sold to people we already knew, we also met two new collectors, one from Europe and one from Latin America, that we will probably develop relationships with. Why should a New York gallery do a New York fair? In our case, our gallery is a little off the beaten path, in the West Village, so we can come here and connect with a lot of people — even New Yorkers we do business with — who don't necessarily make it to the gallery. A fair is a chance to be a part of the conversation. I talked recently with a colleague who took a break from art fairs — he hasn't done any art fairs in two years — and he told me he hasn't felt like he's been part of the conversation lately. So, as frustrating as it can get to be sitting here, and it can be a little grueling sometimes, you do feel like you're part of something.