Armed with black pen and sketchbook, artist aims to draw all 8.3 million NYers[/News]
BY Stephanie Gaskell
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Monday, April 19th 2010, 4:00 AM
Artist Jason Polan (right), 27, stands in the intersection of Houston and Broadway and sketches strangers. He wants to sketch every New Yorker, a project that he has worked on for over 2 years.
There are 8.3 million people living in New York City - and Jason Polan wants to draw each and every one of them.
The Manhattan artist has spent the past two years trying to sketch as many people as he can for a project titled, "Every Person in New York."
He's completed about 10,000 drawings so far.
It's an ambitious undertaking - and at the rate Polan is going, it could take 1,660 more years to complete.
"I'd love to finish, but I don't think it's possible," he conceded. "I just want it to be something that's fun and I want it to be something that lasts a long time."
The 27-year-old Michigan native scours the streets nearly every day with his black pen and notepad and tries to capture the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple.
"I don't interact with people when I'm drawing them," he said. "I found that when they know that I'm drawing them, it changes things a little bit."
Polan has sketched everyone from a woman named Harriet walking through Union Square to comedian Jerry Seinfeld eating a burger in midtown.
"Some people that I draw may never know that I've drawn them," he said.
You don't have to be a New York resident to be captured by Polan and you can e-mail him to request to be sketched.
"People will e-mail me from Spain or Germany and say, 'Will you draw me? I'm going to be in the city,'" he said.
Polan is fascinated with numbers. He has another project called "100 People I Saw Today/One Person I Saw 100 Times Today."
"I've always been attracted to quantities of things," he said.
For more information, check out Polan's blog at http://everypersoninnewyork.blogspot.com.
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Artist to draw all New Yorkers
- Thread starter NBK*Twitch
- Start date
Doubt he'll be able to do it...given the amount of people coming and going in NYC.
he won't be able to do it, but if someone takes up his work after he no longer can then the project it's self could succeed.
I just wonder where he keeps all his drawings?