Saturday in the Park

Artists Peter Walsh and Xiang Yue Chuan enjoying the show on a beautiful day in the park. Photo by Tim Murray.

The Central Park Portrait Exchange was shown in its entirety for the first time this Saturday, June 16, 2012 on a gloriously beautiful early summer day in Manhattan’s Central Park. Artists, well-wishers, tourists and park visitors came out to see the work and discuss the project. The 15 sets of drawings were set up in a portable exhibit under a majestic oak tree in the same small plaza where many of the drawings had been completed. The Parks Department police, also known as PEP officers (Parks Enforcement Patrol), did not hinder the exhibition in any way.

Many of the participating Portrait Exchange artists were in the park Saturday including Xiang Yue Chuan, Dario Zapata, Artashes Karslian, Wei Chen, Jorge Rivera, Peter Walsh and Sharif Sadiq and those that could easily take a break from their work dropped by to see the display.

Special thanks go out to all the artists working in the park and to Tim Murray who shot video and still photography. Below is small slideshow of snapshots from the day. More photos are on the way soon and a short documentary of the day should be available later this summer.

Central Park Portrait Exchange Exhibition! Saturday, June 16, 10am-2pm

 
Finally! All 15 sets of original drawings made as part of the Central Park Portrait Exchange will be exhibited for one day only on Saturday, June 16 from 10am till 2pm - on site in the southeast corner of Central Park, 60th Street at Grand Army Plaza.

Participating artists include Amon Azizov, Wei Chen, Qiao Fu, Gao Min, Artashes Karslian, Ji Yin Jin, Li Qun, Lin Ruo, Dean Lu, Ren Jien-Guo, Jorge Rivera, Sharif Sadiq, Peter Walsh, Xiang Yue Chuan, Dario Zapata and Zhuang Xuemin.

Click here for the Facebook event page.
See the map below, or click here for a map.

"The drawings will go up in a great shaded spot just a few yards from where many of the Central Park portrait artists - like Xiang Yue Chuan and Dario Zapata - set up and work every day," says organizer Peter Walsh. "But why is space available? Because the new park rules have made this perfect location 'illegal' for artists." The one day "pop-up" exhibition can set up only because the portrait exchange drawings will be marked "For Display Only, Not For Sale."

Artists have sued the Parks Department in federal and state court. Oral arguments on the City’s motion for summary judgment in the federal lawsuit will be heard by judge Richard J. Sullivan on Thursday, June 28 at 2:30pm at the Federal Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street in Manhattan.



View Central Park Portrait Exchange Exhibition in a larger map

Portrait Exchange Exhibition on the Way!

"Exhibition-in-a-Box"

The thirty original drawings from the Central Park Portrait Exchange will be shown soon in a one day pop-up exhibition in Manhattan’s Central Park. The portable display is designed to emerge from a milk crate on wheels and unfold into an elegant display that gives park visitors – and the participating artists themselves – a chance to finally see all fifteen pairs of portrait exchanges simultaneously.

Built by project organizer and artist Peter Walsh, the “exhibition-in-a-box” will set up directly across the street from Grand Army Plaza’s Sherman monument in the southeast corner of Central Park on a spot that has recently become “off-limits” to artist vendors because of controversial new park rules instituted in 2010. Those rules have sparked several artist lawsuits against the city in both state and federal courts. Those new rules do not apply to the upcoming display of the Central Park Portrait Exchange since they explicitly impact only “expressive matter vendors” selling art in New York City parks and do not apply to artists who, as Federal Judge Richard J. Sullivan said at a court hearing in July of 2010, wish to participate in the “marketplace of ideas” by just displaying art.

Says Walsh: “This is an opportunity for a group of artists to reoccupy a part of the commons that is increasingly under attack from well-heeled interlopers who seek to reduce the varied ways in which a public park can be used by ordinary people. I can’t wait to talk to people in the park and see how they respond to the drawings. Showing art in an open public place creates incredible dialogues that go beyond what is shared in the cloistered space of galleries and museums.”

The date for the one-day show will be announced soon. For details of the ongoing construction of the exhibition, see the photo slideshow below.

Session Nine: Gao Min and Peter Walsh

Gao Min and Peter Walsh on Wien Walk in Central Park, September 3, 2011. Photo by Wei Chen

Shaded by the cool oak canopy of Central Park’s Wein Walk, artists Gao Min and Peter Walsh finished their exchange of drawings this morning – number fifteen in the ongoing series of portrait exchanges in the Central Park Portrait Exchange. The session had been interrupted three weeks earlier when a brisk trade of art patrons prevented Walsh from beginning his drawing. Gao had a line of customers!

Sitting for his portrait this morning Gao laughed, “It’s been a long time since I’ve sat for someone else. It’s hard! When I was a student at art school in China we would sit for each other, but it’s been years.” Gao is a former art professor and former director of the Division of Western Arts in the Department of Fine Arts at Southwest-China University, a large school located in Chongqing, China. Among his many achievements is his college level instructional art book “Color,” which has gone through 13 editions in China.

“I’ve been drawing in Central Park for sixteen years,” he says, “though mainly now I come on weekends. Aside from the extra money, I come because of the faces. So many faces to draw!” During the week Gao works in a commercial art studio. Trained in the realist drawing tradition (both Chinese and Western), Gao also paints at home and is experimenting with new works that he has yet to release to the public. To see older works, go to his website here.

Some thoughts from Peter Walsh:

“Ouch. I try not to see the Central Park Portrait Exchange as a competitive form, but when my work is placed next to someone as talented as Gao Min, it’s hard not to feel the pain!

I was excited to complete this exchange because I had first met Min in New York State court in September of 2010 when we both testified against the New York City Parks Department by authenticating our videos of artists being abused by new park rules that forced them to sprint into Central Park at 6am every morning. Click here and here for details. Min’s disturbing video was appropriately called “Artist or Race Cow?”; mine was “NYC Mayor Bloomberg Forces Artists to Run for their Livelihoods.”

That said, although my rough drawing of Min pales next to his elegant one of me, I did capture some part of a likeness of him. “It’s fine,” says Min, “you’re good enough to work here in the park if you wanted to. People will pay.”

I’ll take that as a thumbs up! Thanks, Min.

Session Eight: Amon Azizov and Peter Walsh

Amon Azizov on Wien Walk in Central Park. Photo Peter Walsh

As he waits patiently for his customers in Central Park under Wien Walk's majestic oaks and plane trees - the mothers from New Jersey and Upstate New York bringing their tween children, the middle-aged tourists from Ohio, the young lovers from the Bronx - artist Amon Azizov feeds the squirrels peanuts from a bag.

Dressed in a denim jacket with the collar turned up against the sun and a cap riding low on his head, Mr. Azizov is prepared for a long day drawing in the open air. Every item in his kit, from the lightweight painting easel, to his worn brushes which sport just the right spring in the bristles, to the Velcro he uses to quickly transform his sample portraits of figures like Nelson Mandela into a workstation, suggests a man committed to using the fewest materials to achieve the highest ends. He has the aura of a sea captain or a mountain climber.

Originally from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where he trained as an artist and was a member of the Soviet Union Artists Union, Mr. Azizov uses the “brush technique” like his fellow former soviet Artashes Karslian working just a few yards down the path on Wien Walk. “I’ve been working here in Central Park for about seven year now,” he says. Mr. Azizov and Peter Walsh exchanged portraits on Saturday morning, August 8th, 2011.

Amon Azizov and Peter Walsh exchange portraits.

Some comments from Peter Walsh:

“Amon and I were introduced by Artashes, who explained the portrait exchange to him in Russian. But I found his English to be quite good. He asked that I draw first and he second. My own drawing went quickly and I was able to catch a good likeness but make a rather bad drawing. I fell to some of the most basic errors of portraiture: I had trouble setting the eyes and I cropped the back of Amon’s head where I should have given it room. Being an amateur, I was rusty.

Amon took a bit longer to do his portrait of me, which is quite good and has the clean, airbrushed finish that the brush technique produces. First he laid in the over-all structure of my head and then he methodically dropped in each of the parts: my mouth and nose, then my right eye, then my left, then my left ear, then my shirt.

When he’s not doing portraits, Amon is a sculptor. “I’ve developed my own technique that relies on sheet metal. No clay or other sculpting materials,” he says. “For example, about two years ago a completed a 16-foot tall giraffe.”

I was pleased to learn that we live fairly close to each other in Brooklyn, Amon at the Newkirk stop on the Q train and me at the Church Avenue stop on the F. Not so surprising I suppose as the neighborhoods have many Russian speakers and communities from across the former Soviet territories. Between us lie several great Central Asian restaurants on Ditmas Avenue such as Restaurant Afsona (Uzbeki) and Café Sim-Sim (Azerbaijani).

The drawings will be posted soon.

NOTE: I also began an exchange with Min Gao, a very talented Chinese artist who also shot some important video footage that has been used in court to defend artists working in New York City’s parks. But business picked up quickly and customers were waiting so I wasn’t able to do my portrait of Gao. We’ll complete the exchange soon.

Public Space Battle in NYC Grows: City Actions Now Extend Beyond Artists to Include Musicians and Newspapers

As scorching summer temperatures hit Manhattan, sparring over what a person can do in New York City’s public parks has heated up too.

In May a panel of New York State Appeals Court judges allowed new park rules to go into effect, dramatically restricting where artists can work and sell in four busy city parks, pending the outcome of an artists’ lawsuit against the city’s Parks Department.

See:
“Panel Finds Vendor Restrictions Do Not Violate Free Speech Rights” New York Law Journal, May 18, 2011.
"Appeals Court Rules Against Artists in Dua v. City of New York Department of Parks Suit," Cental Park Portrait Exchange, May 18, 2011.


Meanwhile the Parks Department ordered it’s Parks Enforcement Patrol (PEP) officers to expand enforcement of restrictions beyond artist vendors to include musicians in newly created “Quiet Zones,” including near the crowded and popular Bethesda Fountain in the heart of Central Park.

See:
“Musicians chased from Central Park,” New York Post, May 28, 2011.
“Musician Crackdown At Central Park's Bethesda Fountain,” A Walk in the Park, May 29, 2011.
“No Radios by the Fountain, Please! Or Cellos!,” New York Times, June 5, 2011.


Concurrently, Robert Lederman, president of the street artists organization A.R.T.I.S.T and an artist/plaintiff in a second suit against the city, in federal court, reports that new depositions of PEP officials confirm that sellers of newspapers such as the New York Times, New York Post and the Daily News are now officially banned from selling from temporary stands in parks such as Union Square. Those news-sellers would be forced to compete for the same restricted locations used by artists.

See:
“Why Bloomberg is Evicting Newspaper Vendors From 4 NYC Parks,” Robert Lederman, June 8, 2011.
“Art vendors spots restricted at Union Square, High Line,” The Villager, Volume 81, Number 2: June 9 to 15, 2011.

NYC Begins Crackdown on Musicians in Central Park

The New York City Parks Department has begun a crack down against musicians performing at Central Park’s famed Bethesda Fountain, targeting a classical harpist, a father of nine singing spirituals and a double-bass player who loves Bach, according to the New York Post.

“Is this in preparation for a new 30 table bar/food concession the City is quietly planning to install five feet away?” asks the blog A Walk in the Park.

The news comes on the heels of a recent New York State appeals court decision that removed a temporary injunction protecting artists and other expressive matter vendors working in four Manhattan parks from new park rules limiting their right to work and sell in public parks.

According to the Post, “When asked about the music crackdown, a spokesman for the Central Park Conservancy, the cash-flush nonprofit that runs the park for the city, said: ‘The fountain is a place for quiet reflection.’”

The battle over public space in New York City will continue soon in federal court as artists take their case back to a courtroom in the United States District Court’s Southern District of New York.

5:55am: Sunday in the Park or Horse Race?

Artists waiting to race into Central Park's Wien Walk, 5:55am, Sunday, May 29, 2011

As the summer drawing season begins, the removal of a court-ordered restraining order blocking enforcement of new park rules is again forcing artists to fight for limited spaces in New York City's Central Park and three other Manhattan parks. This morning, with a 6:00am nod of the head from a Parks Department PEP officer, a dozen artists sprinted into Central Park's Wien Walk to secure locations. For video of the foot race shot last summer (July 2010), click here.

Then the waiting began again. The park goers and tourists who are these artists' dedicated fans and customers don't really begin arriving in any substantial numbers for about 5 hours. A long day gets longer with the new park rules.

Artists waiting for customers in Central Park's Wien Walk, 7:15am, Sunday, May 29, 2011.

Appeals Court Rules Against Artists in Dua v. City of New York Department of Parks Suit

A panel of judges from the Appellate Division, First Department of the New York State Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling by Justice Milton A. Tingling denying a preliminary injunction to the artist plaintiffs in the Dua v. City of New York Department of Parks suit. The unanimous decision vacates the current temporary restraining order blocking the implementation of a new set of Park Rules and is a setback for artists working in New York City's Public Parks.

The new rules will go into effect sometime this week, returning artists to the difficult circumstances experienced last summer between July 19, 2010, when the rules were first implemented and August 25, 2010, when Justice Martin Schoenfeld granted a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of those rules. Click here to see those Rules, (Then click to the right on the link: "Adoption of Rule Amendments and Maps Regarding Expressive Matter Vending [as published in the City Record on June 18, 2010 - PDF, 781 KB]").

In making their decision, the five judges ruled that the plaintiffs "failed to demonstrate 'a likelihood of success on the merits' of their challenge to the subject regulations, since they failed to show that the regulations violated their rights under the New York State Constitution." To read the decision, click here.

What next?

No word yet from the Dua artist plaintiffs, but we should know something soon.

Robert Lederman, President of the street artists' organization A.R.T.I.S.T., vowed today in an email blast to win his own suit in Federal Court against the City Parks Department, Lederman et al. v Parks Department. Mr. Lederman stated that that lawsuit "is proceeding according to schedule."

For an overview on the legal situation see this article in the New York Law Journal.

Or this article from A Walk in the Park.

The Horrendous along with the Exquisite

"Quite large numbers of LF's works founder.
...
'I could tell that it wouldn't develop into a finished picture. There's something wrong.'"

p. 104 in Martin Gayford’s Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucien Freud

Some of the drawings made for the Portrait Exchange are really gorgeous. Sometimes they were laid down on the paper so quickly that they seem to have been miraculously pulled out of a magician's top hat. Others - many of my drawings, in fact - are small catastrophes, neither good drawings nor accurate likenesses.

Should I just politely fold them into the kitchen trash bin and hurry them to the curb so they can be wisked away before they do more damage?

No. I don't think so.

You can see them all here on this blog. If the editor's creed is to "cut, cut, cut," what is to be gained by showing everything, the horrendous along with the exquisite?

Traditionally the artist cherry-picks the best work they do and discards the rest to give the illusion of mastery that builds the artist's reputation, their "brand" as we might call it today. However, when you don't edit, you get a full set of "data points" and when you share that set of data points, you allow the viewer to make their own conclusions about what's happening in the set. That's reason one.

I want to see all the drawings made in the Central Park Portrait Exchange because I really don't know what the drawings are going to look like. Who is in the park making portraits and what do they look like? If each one of them draws the same person under similar conditions but all the drawings are uniquely different, what is the relationship between these portraits?

At the heart of the matter is the ephemeral nature of human perception as it plays out within the tradition of looking at another person's face and translating that face into marks on a piece of paper. Editing out the "bad" drawings skews the data. That's reason two.

.....

I was chagrined to see that someone has "favorited" one of the Portrait Exchange pairs on my public Flickr account and cruelly enough its the most hideous two drawings done so far! Qiao Fu and I had a truly bad day and now someone's cherry-picking our failures! Ouch.

Here's that "favorite" for your enjoyment:

The Edict of 1853

"Clown Playing a Drum"
  Honore Daumier, c. 1865-67
The British Museum, London

“… he met the challenge with a swift and flexible drawing style that could summarize a situation with arresting economy. The soft, greasy lithographic crayon was his ally in this effort; compliant and responsive, ‘it followed [his] thoughts,’ he reportedly said, whereas ‘the lead pencil was stubborn and did not obey’ him.

Théodore de Banville remembered seeing the artist in his studio on the Quai d’Anjou drawing with the ‘débris’ of used crayons, which he repeatedly rotated in order to sharpen them. It was this habit of using broken ends and stumps, de Banville observed, that gave his lines ‘hardiesse.’”

Colta Ives, “Drawing at Liberty: Daumier’s Style,” Daumier Drawings, (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), p. 8.

     Charcoal on newsprint: these are the preferred materials of the professionals making portraits in New York City’s Central Park. Not just any charcoal but a particular Chinese crayon manufactured in Shanghai. Marked '3-Stars' on the box, each stick is similar in size and form to a Conté crayon but slightly greasier. You can see several, gifted to me by Xiang Yue Chuan, in the photo below, one neatly wrapped in masking tape to keep the fingers clean during a long workday outdoors.

     These coal black sticks give a vivid painterly hue to a drawing, although personally I find them unforgiving. Unlike the hard and dusty German-made Faber-Castell Pitt Charcoal pencils I use which allow me to lift pigment with a kneaded eraser, add highlights or make corrections, the Chinese 3-Stars require the accurate placement of a mark the first time around. Indeed it is these punchy, confident marks that give the best of the Central Park artists’ work, like Daumier’s in the quote above, their “hardiesse” – a boldness of line and form.

     Of course, if you have time on your hands, a twig of willow vine charcoal, a waxier French-made Conté crayon or a round stick of machine-compressed charcoal does allow you to build up a richness of tones which is impossible to get with the brassier Chinese crayons, especially if you are sprinting to complete the likeness of an over-scheduled tourist in a busy park on a blustery Manhattan afternoon.

      The 3-Stars are made for speed. One edge of the tip lays down a clean line, the other a broad stoke of shadow, the crayon’s oiliness giving a fine inkiness to a drawing with no room for erasure. These are still charcoals, though – nowhere near as fatty as Daumier’s litho crayons which bend and melt like chocolate in the hand under the warmth of an artist’s fingertips.

     This is no idle shoptalk. This is political economy focused to a diamond-like perfection: materials plus knowledge plus skill plus labor produces the customer’s image and the artist’s livelihood. The wrong mix of these ingredients and the artist loses the commission.

     There is no coincidence in my choice of Daumier, the paid caricaturist, as a reference point when discussing the work of the artists in Central Park. Daumier, who captured the bustling vibrant public space of nineteenth century Paris streets, exemplifying Baudelaire’s call for artists to abandon the ancients and embrace the modern world, routinely gave image to the barrel-organ grinders, the ‘saltimbanques on the move,’ the itinerant street musicians of that city. 

     Like today’s Central Park portrait artists, those “expressive matter vendors” of the 1850s and 60s were under concerted attack by municipal forces. Indeed, as described by T.J. Clark in his classic study “Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France 1848-1851” (London, 1973), the 1852 arrival of Empire in the aftermath of a coup d'etat against the short-lived Second Republic produced an immediate crackdown against street entertainers. "From that moment, the war was on against the saltimbanque. The high point of the campaign came in 1853, when the government drafted a law against the whole profession, and ordered its Prefects to put it in force" (p.121). The Edict of  1853 established Paris’s own licensing scheme to control street artists and performers, driving them from location to location as they attempted to make a living.

     It is this battle over public space by street artists and Daumier’s grappling with understanding the provisional place of artists in modern society that is so ruthlessly conveyed in his drawings and watercolors of that time.

“plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose”

Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, January 1849
(wikitionary.org, retrieved December 5, 2010)

Peter Walsh drawing Wei Chen in Central Park, Manhattan, May 17, 2010.

 NOTE: The 3-Star Drawing Charcoal mentioned in this post, and other supplies used by portrait artists in the park, are available at UDAC in Long Island City, Queens at 30-10 41st Avenue, 4th Floor.

Non-Monetary Exchange, Part Two

What about behind the scenes?

How do the documentary photos that you see on this blog get taken? What about the video or the brochure that was created?

Again, barter is the modus operandi when intangibles like art are being created in social spaces that are invisible to cash economies. A good example is the hours of superb digital video that Emmy-award winning filmmakers Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra shot on the first day of the Portrait Exchange. Although they were incredibly busy, Kathy and Roberto agreed to shoot for a variety of reasons including their own interest in the project and its focus on art-making in an unexpected place, and also, friendship – I’ve known them for years. Still, we also made a deal for a pair of portraits drawn by me, a deal which is as yet unredeemed (One of the intriguing aspects of barter economies is that the barter tends to slow down the pace of economic interactions between individuals, which is generally considered a negative. Yet my debt to Kathy and Roberto has drawn out our exchange to many months, in some ways magnifying our connections by ensuring that I contact them again down the road. This burden to reconnect hangs in the air like a thread between us until the barter is completed. I’m bound to their generosity. Economic exchange of this kind is not like anonymously buying a cup of coffee, or even, quite frankly, like hiring someone to do a one day video shoot.).

In the case of the Central Park Portrait Exchange, another issue of importance is the development of new internet driven barter tools. I’ve relied heavily on an artist/barter website called OurGoods.org. OurGoods, founded by a group of artists and designers including Jen Abrams, Louise Ma, Carl Tashian, Rich Watts, and Caroline Woolard, describes itself as “a community of cultural producers matching "needs" to offered "haves".” I would describe it as being like a barter Ebay for artists, except that barter economies are fundamentally more complex than cash-driven economies in terms of person-to-person interactions and are more capable of bringing people together in relationships that may play out over years.

By using the OurGoods site I’ve received the photographic skills of four different artists, help on the ground during the portrait exchanges, Mandarin translation services and the design of a brochure to hand out onsite in Central Park! In exchange I’ve provided many bags of organic fruits and vegetables and a variety of as yet unfulfilled promises such as studio visits and grant-writing advice. I find it gratifying that the barter system that OurGoods uses rhymes so well with the goals of the Portrait Exchange.

Still, in the end, my own donated labor is the prime animating force of the project.

How does an art project like the Central Park Portrait Exchange come into being?

    
Mostly through non-monetary exchange.

What’s that?

Trades, favors, apples for oranges, my labor given for your labor.

For example, each artist – professionals like Wei Chen, Dario Zapata or Artashes Karslian who regularly work in Central Park – has contributed a drawing and sat for another, but no money has changed hands (at least not yet). What do they get out of the deal and what do I, Peter Walsh, as organizer of the Portrait Exchange get out of this “non-monetary exchange”?

Well first, as the project organizer I have temporary physical possession of the drawings, which I hope to be able to exhibit down the road as a group exhibition. Maybe the work will be sold. Or not. At some point, if the drawings are not sold, the physical portrait exchange will be completed. I will receive all the drawings of myself and each artist will receive the portrait that I drew of them.

As the exchange organizer I get the added value of helping to create a group artwork which, outside of its considerable value as a meaningful artwork, has the potential to provide me with other opportunities in the art world and theoretically helps to build my career.

For the artists working in Central Park who have chosen to participate in the exchange, there’s been a savvy calculation that doing so will result in publicity and other intangibles that may help in their fight against New York City’s new rules restricting their ability to work in the park. That gambit has already paid off in articles such as journalist Leslie Koch's article "Artists sue Mayor Bloomberg, NYC Parks Department over new regulations", ongoing blog posts on this site and even in courtroom testimony on their behalf.

On September 13, 2010 I testified in New York State court to the veracity of video footage that I had shot because I’ve been working regularly on the exchange in Central Park. That video, which showed artists being forced by the city to run a footrace every morning in order to work, is part of a body of evidence that has kept in place a Temporary Restraining Order against the city’s new rules – and has given several months’ relief for the artists from the new regulations. How much of that is connected to the portrait exchange is one of those difficult to measure “intangibles,” but the gain is real and has kept work and money coming the artists’ way.

So far, the gamble of participating in the Central Park Portrait Exchange appears to be paying off for everyone.

Cold Weather

Cold weather has arrived.

A Temporary Restraining Order is in effect against the City of New York.

The courts are pondering a Preliminary Injunction against the new New York City Park Rules that drastically reduce the ability of many artists to work and show their work in the parks.

Stay tuned for a mid-project evaluation and commentary on the Central Park Portrait Exchange.

Hearing on Injunction Against New Park Rules Ends; Justice Tingling to Rule Soon

Artists' lawyer Jon Schuyler Brooks questioning artist Gao Min in court on Monday, September 20, 2010. Sketch: P. Walsh

Two more days of artists’ testimony were heard in New York State Supreme Court Justice Milton A. Tingling, Jr.’s courtroom at 60 Centre Street in Manhattan this week, completing the hearing on a possible Preliminary Injunction against the New York City Parks Department’s new rules restricting artists’ ability to show and sell art in four city parks. Justice Tingling continued the standing Temporary Restraining Order pending his decision and indicated that he will rule on the injunction by next week.

On Monday, September 20, 2010 artists Diane Dua and Gao Min testified. Dua, a plaintiff in the case who has traditionally worked near the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park, showed photographs and stated that she was unable to compete for the reduced number of spaces that the new rules had created. Lines for those spots begin forming in the middle of the night and married couples who work as a team have a distinct advantage. Sheryl Neufeld, an attorney for the New York City Law Department’s Administrative Law Division, asked why Dua didn’t simply move to another location. Dua explained that her loaded pushcart of photographs weighed hundreds of pounds and that it was difficult for her, as a petite woman, to move that cart from location to location, not knowing in advance where a space might be.

Artist Gao Min, speaking with the aid of a Mandarin translator, confirmed that he had shot a series of dramatic videos of the scramble to reserve spaces on Wien Walk. Those video clips were shown to Justice Tingling and the courtroom. Click here to see some of that video. This was the second piece of video evidence depicting about the situation at Wien Walk. Click here to see the first video.

On Wednesday, September 22, 2010, artists Bayo Iribhogbe, Tenzin Wangdu, Miriam West and George Moran also testified for the plaintiffs.

At the end of testimony on Wednesday, Justice Tingling continued the standing Temporary Restraining Order pending his decision and indicated that he will rule on the injunction by next week.

Assistant Commish Linn Grilled on the Stand In Artists' Hearing

New York City Parks Department Assistant Commissioner Jack Linn gave unexpected testimony today in Justice Milton A. Tingling, Jr.’s courtroom while under a vigorous cross-examination by artist plaintiffs’ attorney Jon Schuyler Brooks. That testimony is potentially favorable for the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the revised park rules limiting artists’ ability to display and sell art in four New York City Parks.

Linn first testified on a large series of photos that he contended showed evidence of artists causing congestion in the parks and reducing the aesthetic experience of being in park space. He noted that Central Park is considered an artwork in its own right and that there are many permanent and temporary artworks and sculptures in the parks. He appeared to claim that artists working in the parks reduced the ability of the public to enjoy these large-scale artworks sited in the parks.

During voir dire for entering the photos as evidence and during cross-examination, Linn admitted that he had directed park staff to shoot particular photos but had only brought a small portion of those photos to court. Judge Tingling asked the city to give the artists’ attorneys access to the other photos. Linn suggested that what he had done was no different than what artists had done with testimony and videos during Monday’s hearing, but Brooks countered that Linn was attempting to claim his photos represented a general situation in the parks while the artists were presenting particular facts of specific moments. At one point Linn suggested that video shown in court on Monday (such as the video taken on Wien Walk by artist Peter Walsh) was staged. That comment was stuck from the record.

Linn was also grilled on the details of the revised park rules after he testified that he had a significant hand in drafting the rules. At one point he was given a copy of the rules while he searched in vain for an explanation of the process park officers should use in several situations that might arise implementing the first come first serve system.

Also of note, when pushed during questioning, Linn admitted that he did not know of any documented complaints against artist vendors by members of the public. This is in direct contradiction to the city’s published revised rules, which state that such complaints were the impetus for drafting the new rules.
The hearing continues on Monday, September 20th at 2pm at Judge Tingling’s courtroom at 60 Centre Street, Room 321.

(Image: Justice Milton A. Tingling, Jr. in court today. Drawing by Peter Walsh)

Artists Peter Walsh and Joel Kaye Testify, Hearing to Continue Wednesday

"It smells like a license, it walks like a license, it talks like a license," said plaintiffs' attorney Jon Schuyler Brooks as he described the Park Department's new medallion scheme today in Justice Milton A. Tingling Jr.'s courtroom at 60 Centre Street in Manhattan. New York City laws and multiple court rulings forbid the city from imposing a licensing system on artists working in city parks.

Brooks and fellow Phillips Nizer attorneys Kevin B. McGrath and Jeffrey L. Shore presented arguments in favor of converting the standing Temporary Restraining Order against the Revised Park Rules restricting artists' ability to show and sell art in NYC parks into a Preliminary Injunction that would be in effect pending a final court ruling. The city's attorneys argued against the TRO and the Injunction saying that the revised rules were "reasonable time, place and manner restrictions." Attorney Brooks countered that since the rules only place restrictions on the number of artists who can work in the park, that they aren't in fact time, place or manner restrictions at all.

Artist Peter Walsh testified first confirming that he had shot video of artists being forced to race for authorized spots in Central Park. The video was then shown to Justice Tingling and the courtroom.

Artist Joel Kaye then testified about several videos that he had shot at Union Square Park including footage explicitly showing that the city's "authorized spaces" place artists dangerously close to speeding cars and buses, that Greenmarket trucks cause far more congestion than artists, and that there are large open spaces in Union Square Park at even the busiest of times.

The hearing will continue this Wednesday, September 15 at 2pm at the New York County Supreme Court building at 60 Center Street, Room 321 in Manhattan.

(Image: The New York County Supreme Court building at 60 Centre Street in Manhattan. Photo by Peter Walsh.)

State Judge to Hear Artists' Testimony this Monday, September 13th

Justice Milton A. Tingling, Jr. of the New York State Supreme Court will hold a hearing this Monday, September 13^th at 2pm at 60 Center Street, Room 321 on the current Temporary Restraining Order blocking the enforcement of new park rules. Those rules restrict the ability of artists to work in New York City public parks. The hearing could result in a Preliminary Injunction that would block enforcement of the rules pending a final decision in the case filed against the city by artists Diane Dua, Joel Kaye, Artists United and others. That final decision may be many months away.

The artist plaintiffs are represented by Phillips Nizer lawyers Kevin B. McGrath, Jeffrey L. Shore and Jon Schuyler Brooks who will be calling witnesses to give evidence on the artists’ behalf. Artist Peter Walsh is scheduled to testify confirming that he shot video on Wien Walk documenting the degrading regulations created by the new park rules that force artists to race to designated artist locations at 6am every morning.

NY State Court Issues Temporary Restraining Order Against Park Rules

New York State Supreme Court Justice Martin Schoenfeld has issued a five day temporary restraining order blocking the enforcement of the new park rules, effective immediately.

According to Robert Lederman, president of one of the street artists' organizations, A.R.T.I.S.T., " The injunction prevents the Parks Dept from enforcing the decal marked spots and the numerical limit on artists but does NOT stop them from enforcing the new restrictions in the new rules on distance from trees, monuments, benches, the width of a sidewalk and exigent circumstances."

Judge Schoenfeld has also ordered a "Show Cause Hearing" for Monday morning, August 30, 2010 to hear arguments in the case and to decide on whether to extend the injunction.

See more in Albert Amateau's article in today's Villager: "Art Vendors Suit: Regs are unfair to women, elderly."

To see a copy of the injunction click here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/36456382/State-Court-Temp-Injunction

Artists United files in New York State Court for an injunction against the new NYC park rules arguing the rules discriminate against women, the elderly and the disabled.

Following on the heels of multiple videotape examples of artists being forced to race each other for city-approved vending locations in four New York City parks (Central Park, Union Square Park, Battery Park and the High Line), the artists group Artists United has filed for an injunction against the new rules in New York State Supreme Court.

For details on the new court case see the article by Albert Amateau in Downtown Express, Volume 20, Number 36 / August 25 - September 1, 2010: “Second lawsuit challenges new vendor rules for parks.”

To see video shot by Peter Walsh in Central Park see the July 31, 2010 post on this blog: NYC Mayor Bloomberg Forces Artists to Run for Their Livelihoods.