On President and Fifth Avenue the other night, right in front of a community garden,  my husband and I literally stepped on a work of art. Just as we realized what we were stepping on, we saw the artist hovering close to the concrete, signing his chalk drawing and adding the words: The Beat Goes On, with an arrow pointing toward Fourth Avenue He then hopped on his bicycle and was on his way.

At first I thought it was a stoop sale sign with an arrow pointing toward the location of the stoop sale (which is an oh-so-Park Slope thing to do).  But then we bent down and studied the drawing: it said by Ellis G. 2006. Hmmm, I thought. But it’s 2005.

The drawings, appearing on many corners of Fifth Avenue the other night, are like crime scene outlines of a corpse. But in this case, they were something even more ephemeral: the shadows cast by street lights, bicycles, mailboxes, parking meters and fire hydrants. And they were all signed either 2006 or 2009.

Rendered in various colored chalk, the drawings are a cross between  Keith Haring and James Turrell, an artist known for his work about light. I for one had never seen Ellis G’s chalk drawings before; I feel like we made a great discovery. 

Wallking back home from the Brooklyn Fish Camp, we saw many of Ellis G’s drawings and stopped to admire each one.  They are eerily beautiful, almost spooky. The street light shadows look like tall abstractions at first. The bicycles are quite masterful with their perfectly drawn spokes.

Among other things, Ellis G’s work is about gentrification and the fleeting nature of things. In the last ten years, Fifth Avenue has changed a great deal.  One population replacing another; stores going out, new stores coming in; out with the old, in with the new. While there are still some holdouts from the old Fifth Avenue like Joe’s Shoe Repair(got shoe problems, call Joe),  the Donut Shop, the pork butcher, most of it is gone. Like shadows, a neighborhood’s identity can change in an instant in this city – with money, lots of money. There is something poignant about this artist’s attempt to capture the mark of a shadow, something that will soon be gone.

Sidewalk chalk is a great metaphor for time. As are shadows. Ever fleeting, ever moving, ever changing. The fact that Ellis G. dates his work in the future is pure irony, I think. These chalk drawings, like this moment, won’t be around one or more years from now.

Sunday it rained and Ellis G’s Fifth Avenue drawings were probably been washed away. Etherial, yes. But very memorable, too. I’m sure Ellis G. is creating new works to replace  those that  disappeared. On some corner, somewhere. Probably in Brooklyn.