Street art is the Best art: Atlantic Avenue Report

Maybe you’ve noticed that I’ve been writing about my visits to Brooklyn artist’s studios lately—both the art inside the those studios, and the walk I took to get there.

Now, I am solidifying my obsession with “gettingtoart” into a new conclusion: there is no place worth getting to; You’re already there.
Yes, its The Street Art Report

July 11: Some of my favorite street art is made by a local homeless man. He has chestnut-colored skin, is very soft spoken, and can be generally be found, sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk in the vicinity of Atlantic Avenue. His wares are almost never for sale, because he “needs” them to complete what appears to be an ever-changing composition on the sidewalk in front of him. (Once or twice, he has allowed me to purchase a bottle cap or such, if I tell him how much I like it.)

His daily arrangements favor groupings according to color (usually pretty bright: primary colors are a fave;some pink or white)
and also according to shape (late at night a while back, a bunch of french curves from a 99-cent store he had was pretty amazing; we both reveled at how perfect they looked in their plastic sleeve. I asked him if he would sell them to me, but he said No. Very sweetly, apologizing. he said he really needed them, even though he could see i liked them, too).

Here is a recent arrangement, from a very very hot day, with no shade cover. (that’s the Op Ed Page of the TIMES, folded up, on the right; the mirrors are from makeup compacts.)
He wasn’t very talkative.

I didn’t have money this day to give him. But I did have, at the bottom of my clutch purse, a bunch of bright plastic beads in funny shapes that had broken off a little girl’s necklace (maybe from a playdate gone south with my kid? I’m not sure how I had them). Some were pretty garish, some were sorta OK: dark blue, white, yellow, in star- and other spiky/rounded shapes. I bent down and handed them to him as a kind of payment or offering. He was a bit perplexed; then he examined them with the manner of a pawnbroker assessing the market value of a gold watch.
“Oh,” he said, with surprise and concern in his voice. “I don’t know if I can take care of these.” [emphasis mine]

But he included them anyway, as you can see.
I’m thinking that street art is art you contribute to; like signing the guest book at a Chelsea Gallery, only better.