CHRISTO VISITS 97TH STREET

Friday, September 14, 2012.  As I prepared to leave for work I saw this from my window.  I had somehow failed to notice it, so it was as if overnight, Christo had visited 97th Street.  The facade is shielded from sight, some unknown renovation taking place, from which some unforeseeable beauty will burst forth.  I wait in anticipation.

WOMAN ON FIRE

December 15, 2009. Coming back from Supreme Court I came across this sketch on a red fire department call box on the street corner. It immediately reminded me of a drawing I saw years ago on the sidewalk across from Cooper Union. Some kids had decided that they could make money by selling urban drawings of tragic, but to them comic situations. Tragic because of the humanity involved, comic because you wouldn’t dream up those scenarios. This sketch reminds me, in part, of their Crack Whore drawing. The comic aspect has long since stopped being comic, in light of the toll the epidemic has taken on people around me. The tragedy of the addiction looms much larger.