Every Person in New York, by Jason Polan

More from this series:

Man Sleeping on the Downtown B Train

Woman in the Rain

Man Sitting on Steps on Mercer Street

Gloomy, blustery Tuesday greetings, collector people! If I didn't know it was Spring, I'd swear it was Fall. Late May seems a bit, well, late for turtleneck sweaters, wouldn't you say? I prefer it to the Summer swelter, but sheesh! It's been a strange Spring here in New York City.

Hot on the heels of last Thursday's San Francisco treat, we're bringing things back East with Every Person in New York, 600 for 20x200, our second edition from Jason Polan. It's not exactly an edition however, since each of 222 items we are offering is an original one-of-kind drawing.

A lot of what I had to say about The Hand Project, his first edition with us, applies to Every Person in New York as well - Jason has set a lofty (actually impossible) goal of drawing every person in New York. And he takes the goal seriously, in spite of it's impossibility.

What I admire about the endeavor is the attempt to suspend the river of humanity that is our fair city, one person at a time. It's a rich practice with unending, unconquerable source material. My own personal correlation is with the stories I invent about people I see on subways, through restaurant windows, driving taxis, delivering takeout or leaning up against doorways of shops, smoking and bored - it's an interior monologue that's been running for a lifetime, and I'll never tire of it.

As evidenced by the flurry of attention Jason's received for the project, this quixotic undertaking is provocative. I have one friend who questions the project, in part because I think that she thinks that Jason's being arch and ultra-ironic in a McSweeney's kind of way, in spite of my insistence on his sincerity. Other detractors focus on the "but is it art?" avenue of inquiry. My answer, in case it isn't entirely obvious: most definitely!

Some notes about the edition: each of the two hundred $20 editions is a unique drawing of a New Yorker, each of the twenty $200 editions is a drawing of ten New Yorkers on a single piece of 12"x16" paper and each of the two $2000 editions is a drawing of one hundred New Yorkers, one of whom can be you if you want it to be, on a single piece of 18"x22" paper.

This New Yorker, undrawn to date, is taking off for the time being. I'll be back tomorrow with this week's photo edition. See you then!