One Person in New York

I was listening to "All Things Considered" one day last week, and I heard a story about a snowplow driver in Montana (or Wyoming) who wrote a song about being a snowplow driver. He recorded it on YouTube and (as they say on the Internet), the silly thing went viral. People liked the song so much that they called their local radio station and asked to hear it over the air. The radio station offered to produce a professional recording of the song. Asked what he thought about the song’s success, the man said that people like the idea of an ordinary person with an ordinary job doing something creative or artistic.

Later the same day, I scrolled my news feed and was shocked and saddened to read about Jason Polan’s untimely death at age 37. Jason Polan was an artist. His best-known project was published in part in Every Person in New York, a book of his sketches of New Yorkers (he also had a blog of the same title). Polan drew quick sketches of thousands of people, some of them famous and many of whom didn’t know they were being captured on paper. He aspired to draw literally every person in New York, an impossible goal no matter how long he might have lived, but he finished over 30,000 drawings. Who knows how many he might have done if he had more time?

According to his New York Times obituary, he held informal drawing meet-ups, usually at Taco Bell restaurants. Anyone could show up, and lots of people did, many of them non-artists. They drew pictures of each other, or of their food or the contents of their bags, or whatever else was in front of them. It didn’t matter if they were talented or skilled or not. Something about the idea of carrying around a sketchbook and drawing what you see appealed to Polan’s roving band of part-time would-be art students. Maybe they were ordinary people with ordinary jobs, but they were also artists, because they made art.

Jason Polan wasn’t ordinary at all. His other major project, Every Piece of Art in the Museum of Modern Art, was apparently an attempt to get a job at MoMA. MoMA didn’t hire him, which is probably good for the rest of us, though I have to wonder about the competence and vision of museum curators who aren't capable of recognizing and rewarding such obvious genius. Their loss.

I don't write songs (though I do sing quite a lot) and I don't draw much, but I do this. I write about whatever I think about, whatever is interesting, whatever is in front of me. I'm just one of a million other ordinary people who try to spend a few minutes a day making something. Jason Polan was a great artist who saw the beauty and value of ordinary people, not just as subjects but as fellow artists. It's a terrible loss.