It’s amazing the things I’ve learned on the Colbert Report.

Last night, for example, (3/5/08) they had a segment on a 6-year-old girl in Brooklyn whose chalk drawings were labeled “grafitti”; she and her family received a letter from the Sanitation Dept. telling them to clean it up or face a court summons and hundreds of dollars in fines. The little girl’s name is Natalie Shea, and she is apparently, as Gersh Kuntzman in the Brooklyn Angle wryly tells us, the new face of vandalism.

Natalie got busted for her drawing of a blue blob–which was on her own front stoop, by the way, so this is about private space as much as public–by a neighbor, of all people, who called the Dept. of Sanitation to report the “grafitti.” The Dept. then sent the letter to her family, which her family ignored because, of course, it was ridiculous. “Admittedly this drawing was not her best work,” Natalie’s mom says in the article, “she usually sticks to cheerful scenes, not abstracts, frankly–but to send a warning letter like this is just outrageous.”

Natalie with her warning letter.

So while the bureaucrats at the Dept. of Sanitation clearly got themselves into a pretty embarrassing situation, let’s face it: that’s what bureaucracy does, often enough for it not to be surprising. What does surprise me, very unpleasantly, is that someone on Natalie’s street made the call in the first place. Not very neighborly, or intelligent, if you ask me.

Guess what happened next, though? A well-known chalk artist, Ellis Gallagher, was quoted in the Kuntzman article as saying that cops approach him when they see him drawing, but let him go when they see he’s using chalk. Not after the article was released. Gallagher was arrested and thrown in jail for a night before being released the next day at 2 p.m. So Natalie Shea’s bizarre graffiti incident is not just a weird story to wonder over and forget; it’s already affected the interaction of art and public space. I don’t think this is the beginning of some sort of Catch-22 absurdist regime or anything, but Gallagher’s arrest does bear some consideration.

I am sure that in a place as big as New York City, graffiti has to be controlled or it can quickly become offensive and inappropriate. But just think: what would the city be without its sidewalk artists? Its subway musicians? Its impromptu dances on street corners and in parks? In New York, as in all big cities, the public realm is everywhere; because of that physical freedom, intellectual and artistic freedom flourish to an incredible degree. I only hope that more incidents like this don’t start occurring. We need a public realm in order to have a strong community, whether we live in New York or a neighborhood like I’On. And it’s not just so you can run into your neighbors casually, although that helps lay the social foundation; it’s so you have the opportunity to learn more about their talents, passions, and beliefs, should they choose to display them.

And please don’t forget to admire their kids’ chalk drawings.

Filed under: I'On Group on March 5th, 2008