Chalk Shadows
November 28, 2008
Posted by Nick Sarno
One evening Paulina and I were walking back to our apartment in the West Village. I don’t know from where we were coming, but chances are we were walking home from work, and chances are we were tired. We crossed Hudson and walked by Saint Luke in the Fields, the small church just around the corner from our place, and we both stopped and looked at the ground.
I was confused. Not in a specific way–I could just feel my mind trying to process what my eyes were seeing. There was a light over the door of the church which cast a shadow of the wrought iron gate to the sidewalk. The shadow was glowing, outlined in electric blue, and it seemed to hover a few inches from the pavement. I had a vague flashback to any number of times in college when whatever it was I had just taken had kicked in, the moment when my surroundings would flatten out and separate and everything seemed new and strange. I shook the feeling and stepped a little closer.
Someone had traced the shadow in bright blue chalk. The outline was very precise and must have taken whoever did it a very long time. It was so simple, and yet it created a very powerful effect, a kind of optical illusion. As soon as I realized what it was the illusion ended and the shadow fell back to the sidewalk where it was supposed to be.
It was very simple, but it did what art is supposed to do. It made me stop and look. It made me shut up for a moment and it made me talk afterwards. It made me notice something I’d never noticed before and I’ve taken that with me, on a good day seeing this or that shadow in a way I wouldn’t have previously. Mostly, though, it made the world seem new and beautiful and strange. It lasted only for a few seconds, but those seconds meant a lot, especially after coming home to a cramped apartment after a long day of work.
I felt that way a little bit yesterday, too, when I stumbled across this image online:
There are other images here. And the artist, Michael Neff, has a website as well.
