Surely the group also commiserated about the vagaries of semi-legal housing, which can be a powerful unifying force. Heat, hot water, and basic amenities were in short supply, though socializing—often at one of the numerous bars in the vicinity—was part of the deal. “I paint to make friends,” Martin once said, “and hope I will have as many as Mozart.” (Coming from Martin, the statement is rather surprising, given the solitude she pursued later in life.)

As with her friends in Coenties Slip, the living situation had a subtle but perceivable effect on Martin’s work, especially her early paintings. Several pieces from the late 1950s and early ’60s look like draped sailcloth, while others take on the brilliant blue of the sea. “My paintings have neither objects, nor space, not time, not anything—no forms. They are light, lightness, about merging, about formlessness breaking down form,” she once said. “You wouldn’t think of form by the ocean”—or, in those years, by the East River.

In the grander New York timeline, their Coenties Slip community didn’t last long. By 1964, Indiana had moved to the Bowery in SoHo, which was quickly becoming New York’s latest creative capital. Martin left the city in 1967, when she took an extended break from painting. She returned to the great open expanse of New Mexico—worlds away from the decrepit wharf she had called home.