The other day I did a virtual tightrope
walk across from one of the Twin Towers in New York toward the other.
I was 100 stories above New York and it was really fun to step
off the tightrope and walk on air, looking down. This was my view.
I was not in New York when Philippe
Petit made that unbelievable walk - try to imagine it - but it is the
sort of extraordinary event that happens in New York regularly. Of
course, it takes bravery to express your art form anywhere, and Petit
was arrested for his feat, but these sorts of things renew the heart.
The bravery, the skill, the expression and not for money.
It's wasn't as exciting as the
tightrope walk, but in a grimy, loud, coarse city like New York,
there's an element of magic in seeing Christo's series of door frames
built from 2x4s with orange half curtains set up in Central Park. On
a dreary day, it was a bit of cheer as well, and visceral because you
could touch them.
There are art openings, music events,
live artistic expressions of all sorts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and I
presume, the other boroughs, but one event that stays riveted in my
memory is Gregory Colbert's "container museum" that was
docked on the west side of Manhattan for an extended stay. It was a
structure made from old metal shipping containers. Long and wide, it
was 45,000 square feet and the exhibition in it was called "Ashes
and Snow."
Enlarged photographs were hung from the
ceiling on two sides, creating an aisle with plenty of room to walk
behind artwork. The photographs were still frames from a movie that
was showing at the far end of the museum. The photographs were
stunning, but the film was the most beautiful I have ever seen. You
can see some of it here: https://gregorycolbert.com/ And on that
website you can find out where you can now see Colbert's
extraordinary work - it's gone from New York a long time now.
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