Recent photos and thoughts

Recently on my way home after work, I went into the subway station to catch the Q downtown from 42nd Street and there was this man sitting on the pavement, right in front of the main entrance awkwardly in everyone's way, drawing sketches of what seemed almost identical to an outsider art exhibit I saw a couple years ago at the American Folk Art Museum. The exhibit highlighted works of art by mental patients, prisoners, and people who were generally not considered part of the main-stream status quo. For example, many of the pieces were from institutions and hospitals. The work was mostly symmetrical, done with simple utensils, like a Bic pen, and exponentially focused on detail, creating fractals-like illustrations. I found the man and his work fascinating as he didn't seem to be selling it, and didn't seem to care that he was sitting at the end of a long stair case in an overcrowded subway platform, basically blocking a major entrance filled with rat-like herds of train passengers trying to get home as fast as possible, all the while constructing his detailed illustrations unscathed.