He had a blog called Every Person in New York.
He had a big goal: to draw everyone in New York.
I would think you could call him a People Watcher. I often see people doing strange things as they go about their daily lives. When he saw interesting things he would draw them. But then he got sick and then he died aged 37, so he can't finish his project. That made me feel sad, because I love people with big dreams like that.
It reminded me of a quote from Matt Smith's Doctor in Doctor Who.
And there was Jason Polan, drawing all of them. Or trying to.
He published a book of 30, 000 of them as a kind of first installment. He also drew art he saw in the Metropolitan Museum of art and published his drawings of that. He had a drawing blog in some publications like The Times. He showed a bit in galleries.
I love how he would tell people to email him if they wanted to be drawn by him in a public location, and how it would take 2 minutes of their time but he asked for 24 hours warning "beacause I may unfortunately miss you and do not want you to have to invest more than 2 minutes of your time in case I cannot make it."
I want to feature interesting artists and things on this blog and Mr. Polan is the first.
The New York Times has an obituary with some photos here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/arts/jason-polan-dead.html
Art can make you look at the 'ordinary' a different way. Maybe there isn't any ordinary, at all.
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