On the Artist's Turf

IT'S 4 A.M. ON a brisk Saturday morning in April and a man stands at the southern edge of Union Square Park. From the look of his beard, he hasn’t shaved in days. He brushes a flop of sandy brown hair that hangs over his glasses and surveys the pavement. A string of folding tables, traffic cones, wooden crates and milk boxes line the park along 14th Street.

Photographer Mike Murray is one of the first artists to arrive at the park, but he’s not alone. A group of homeless men are asleep on the benches near Union Square West. They have placed markers on dozens of the most coveted spots in the park, which they intend to sell to artists for as little as $20.

Saturday is the busiest day for artist vendors, and they arrive before dawn to score a good location. With the homeless reserving large swaths of pavement, to give up to vendors for a fee, competition for spots is fierce.

“You could take a National Geographic special and overlay it on the behavior that goes on in the park in the morning. Like when monkeys beat on each other and little animals go after each other and then run away,” says Murray.

Artists must have a thick skin to sell their work in Union Square. “You are going to end up arguing with other vendors; you’re going to have crazy customers,” Murray explains. “People are just out of their minds.” At 6-foot- 3-inches, the hardheaded 37-year-old doesn’t back down from a challenge. He will spend the next seven hours waiting for customers to arrive.

Murray sometimes brings his 19year-old son Steven on his early morning commute from Kensington, Brooklyn. Steven was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and attends a residential treatment program in Westchester. He lives with Murray on the weekends. “It’s been really hard working a regular job with him,” he explains. “He’s the reason I’m out here, first and foremost. This keeps me available in case something comes up.”

At the moment, Murray is simply a vendor preparing to sell a few of his original landscape photographs to tourists. He hand-transfers his photographs onto wood blocks, canvas or printing paper, giving them a dreamy feel. In two weeks, however, he’ll become an activist and speak in front of hundreds of people at a public hearing. He opposes a Parks Department proposal that would eliminate roughly 75 percent of the “expressive matter” vendors in four Manhattan parks. The plan would force about 100 vendors to compete on a “first come, first served” basis for just 18 spots in Union Square. The Parks Department claims the proposal will ease congestion. Murray says it will shut independent artists out of the park.

“This is supposed to be ‘first come, first served,’ but the homeless are here all the time, so they’re the first,” says Murray. “They’ll just have them sitting on those spots, and do you think the Parks Department will be out 24 hours a day enforcing that? No way.”

Union Square artists are just beginning to realize the gravity of the situation. Murray was among a handful of artists who attended the April 6 Community Board Six meeting. He was surprised by the board’s negative impression of street artists.

“I am an artist and I sell in Union Square Park,” he said at the meeting. “This is my tax ID. I pay sales tax. I pay federal tax. I pay city tax. I derive my living from selling art in the park… We participate in the economy. I feel like we are being villainized for what we do.” ------

In the desolate pre-dawn park, Murray chats with Samyra Derouiche, 38, a slender woman of Moroccan-French descent. She has found a spot for her table on 14th Street.

Derouiche arrives in the park as early as 10 p.m. on Friday nights to secure a spot for Saturday. This is her only source of income.

“I lost my job when the recession started. With my friend, I was selling DVDs in the public domain, silent films,” she says. “Thanks to this place, I didn’t lose my apartment and was able to make ends meet. And now this is being taken away from us.”

She taught herself to paint as a way to cope after her father died. On a good day, she sells five or six of her abstract paintings, priced at $20 and up. On her worst days she sells nothing.

Derouiche is not satisfied with her spot this morning. In a few hours, she moves her stand to the most coveted spot: the entrance to the Greenmarket. Since the farmer’s market draws heavy foot traffic, it’s also the first area that the homeless reserve. But when no one claims the spots, the vagrants disappear and latecomers swiftly replace them.

While artists disagree which spots are best, there are certain placements—and vendors—they avoid. Stella Marvi is known as the “cat lady.” The 62-year-old shouts for donations for her display of caged kittens. It’s a popular gimmick for tourists, but it annoys the artists.

“People don’t want to sit next to the cat lady. So until she gets here, you’ll see her table moving around,” says Murray. “It’s awful; it stinks. [The visitors] get transfixed by the cat lady and give her five bucks and are on their way.”

Marvi doesn’t arrive in the park until daylight. She’s been in Union Square Park for 33 years, and she expresses solidarity with the artists. “Let people do what they can to survive. Let them stay where they are and make a living.” ------

At 4:50 a.m., Murray leaves his backpack at the southeast corner of the park and heads to University Place for a cup of coffee.

Murray didn’t attend art school. As a teenage father juggling two jobs, he learned his trade as a photographer’s assistant in Rochester before coming to New York City in 2006.

He took a job as a trade show representative at B&H, but a visit to Soho convinced him to sell his photographs on the street. When he first started selling in the park in 2008, Murray admits, he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. “My first Saturday I came out here, I didn’t make any sales at all. I was so disheartened. And it rained. It ruined, like, half of my stuff. I didn’t have an umbrella; I didn’t have any plastic. I figured at least the minimum I should make in a day coming out was what I made on a shoot. Even a third assistant makes like $150, $200 a day. So I would need to make at least $250 a day for this to be worth it.”

He stuck with it and now can earn up to $600 on a busy Saturday. He once sold a piece for $1,800. Comprised of four heavy, wooden panels and measuring 4- feet-by-6-feet, it took him a week to create. ------ By 6:30 a.m., the sun is up and Kenny Kudulis, 28, has claimed a spot next to Murray. Kudulis hangs a protest sign on his empty rack. Originally from Alabama and now living in Jackson Heights, he is a three-year Union Square Park veteran. He sells small, wooden blocks printed with his original designs for $10 each. His lightweight sweatshirt offers little protection from the cold, but Kudulis calls this a “Disneyland day.” He remembers a night he spent in the park during the Christmas rush, which made him question his choice to be a street artist. He’d arrived at 2:30 a.m. to claim a spot near the Holiday Market. “It was freezing. I got my little table and I was shivering. I was about to pass out, just because I was tired, so I flipped my table upside down so I wouldn’t have to lay on the [ground],” recalls Kudulis. “Ed, this homeless dude, he came over and he offered me his cardboard boxes to protect me from the wind and the cold, and he offered to buy me a cup of tea.”

Kudulis appreciated the offer but declined. He remembers thinking to himself, “This is my lowest point right now. I have a BFA and here I am.” ------

Just before 7 a.m., Mike Murray leaves Union Square Park and embarks on a 20-minute walk through the East Village to Manhattan Mini Storage. He loads a pushcart with two plastic storage bins, metal racks, an easel, a collapsible chair and a dozen garbage bags filled with framed photographs. Taxis are the only signs of street life as Murray pushes his cart past Astor Place back toward Union Square. ------

Robert Lederman arrives at the park at 8:10 a.m., holding three posters. They depict a scowling Mayor Bloomberg, surrounded by dollar signs and the slogans “Anti-Free Speech” and “Park Privatizer.”

Lederman, 59, considers himself a “lifelong street artist.” He began selling his paintings at age 12, outside of Dubrow’s restaurant in Brooklyn. He painted these Bloomberg posters on the street, he says, from materials he found in the trash.

As the president of advocacy group A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists’ Response To Illegal State Tactics), Lederman is the most vocal opponent of the Parks Department proposal. The Parks Department announced the plan on March 24 in a legal notice in The City Record, an obscure daily newspaper. Lederman immediately alerted his network of media contacts, activists, politicians and the 1,300 members of his [NYCStreetArtist Yahoo group].

He has been arrested 43 times for selling art on city streets and clashed frequently with the Giuliani administration. He was a plaintiff in two successful lawsuits against the city, which established vendors’ First Amendment right to sell expressive materials without obtaining a permit or license.

“If the rules go into effect, we’ll be setting up here every single day in larger numbers than they have here now. That’s what we did at the Met in ’98. They told us all to leave but we did just the opposite. When they took our art, which they did—they confiscated it every day—we just made protest art. We taunted them to confiscate it and we got them on the TV every night confiscating my protest signs. Literally armfuls of protest signs, saying ‘Arrest Giuliani.’” Lederman faced two challenges before the public hearing on April 23. First, to get the public to care about the plight of street artists, or more opaquely, “expressive matter vendors.” Second, to turn a diverse group of artists, who are used to competing with one another, into a unified political body.

His first priority this morning, however, is to end the sale of spots by the homeless, which contradicts his anti-privatization message.

“Frankly, I blame the artists and not the homeless people. If I was homeless— and I have been—and I saw an angle like that, then I might even take it myself. If you’re stupid enough to buy a spot that’s yours by right for free, then you’re the one who should be ashamed, not the homeless person.” ------ At 9:10 a.m., artists leave their stands and rally around Lederman in the southern plaza. He urges artists to write to the Parks Department, display protest signs, and follow the current vending rules. “The Parks Department doesn’t care about your petty little cliques… they don’t want any of you here,” he says. “It’s not business as usual anymore. You are in a crisis.” The message resonates with Murray.

He believes that artists aren’t taking the proposal seriously and was disappointed by the low turnout at recent community board meetings. “I’m preparing for the worst. I don’t think other people are,” he says.

The rally ends with cheers of “artist power.” The chorus is joined by a disturbed man, who has spent the day screaming obscenities underneath the George Washington statue. ------

At 9:45 a.m., Murray is ready to hang his first piece of protest art. He has created a large print: the text of the First Amendment is scrawled across a roll of toilet paper.

Across from Murray’s stand, a vendor of stock NYC photography and a man selling Native American T-shirts are arguing. After a few minutes, the photo vendor leaves and the men continue setting up their stands.

“This is pretty tame,” explains Murray, who has seen vendors go “ballistic” over spots. A homeless man once threatened to stab him over a space. Murray is friendly with Brooklyn artist Marty Allen, and both men enjoy standing up to aggressive vendors.

Allen, 32, does not look like the confrontational type. He sells framed portraits of sock puppets and appears genuinely excited to chat with a constant stream of customers. But Allen has gone head to head with the park’s most controversial vendor: Iddi Amadu, a seller of salt and pepper shakers.

“Most people tend to avoid any interaction with him because he is clearly out of his mind. He physically assaulted a vendor,” says Murray.

“That day Iddi wasn’t there, so I put my table down. As soon as I did, this other guy runs over with a green crate and sticks it down there. I think he was supposed to be watching it and forgot to put the marker out. And I said, ‘No, I’m not moving, you can’t just run over with a crate and expect me to move.’ So we argue and I kicked his crate and then Iddi shows up and grabs my table, throws it on the ground and starts screaming at me. I start screaming at him, and we go back and forth.”

Amadu admits to repeated clashes with vendors and police. “I have been arrested before, for spitting next to my table. Cursing the cop next to my table. Throwing my salt and pepper shakers at a cop,” says Amadu, who describes his age as “over 49.” Originally from Ghana, he says cliques of vendors have tried to push him out of the park.

Amadu claims his salt and pepper shakers are handcrafted sculptures, but some vendors believe his merchandise is not “expressive matter.”

The Parks Enforcement Patrol (PEP) is responsible for regulating expressive matter vendors in city parks. Officers are authorized to issue summonses for a range of violations, including the sale of “crafts and merchandise” without a General Vendor’s License.

No officials come to question Amadu or other vendors this morning. In fact, no PEP officers are spotted during this reporter’s seven hour stay in Union Square Park.

“If the Parks Department would just enforce the rules that are in place, it would get rid of a lot of the riffraff and get back to what it was two or three years ago when it was just solid artists out here,” says Kenny Kudulis, echoing a common complaint among the Union Square artists. “I think they want to let us go to this point where it’s so wild and untamed that they have a better case against us to try and kick us out.”

The Parks Department refused to answer questions about lax enforcement. In response to repeated inquiries, spokesperson Vickie Karp said, “Parks is aware of the complaint and is looking into it.” ------ At 10:45 a.m., Murray decides to hold a fire sale and posts a 30-percent-off sign on his stand. “Who knows what’s gonna happen in a couple of weeks?” None of the artists interviewed today—over a dozen people—think they have a shot at getting one of the 18 spots allocated in the Parks Department plan. “We’ll fight it, but if that doesn’t work out, a couple of us could get together and form a collective and find a little nook in the city. We’d sell on the street,” says Kudulis. By 11 a.m., customers have arrived at Murray’s table. Artists have taken all of the spots in the southern plaza and a third row of tables has begun to form. ------

Hundreds of street artists have gathered outside of the Chelsea Recreation Center April 23 to protest the Parks Department plan. Lederman kicks off the rally with a chant of “artist power” that lasts a full two minutes. The crowd is peppered with familiar faces—Mike Murray, Samyra Deriouche, Marty Allen, Kenny Kudulis—who wear yellow “artist rights” T-shirts and clutch posters denouncing Mayor Bloomberg.

The public hearing begins at 11 a.m. Two hours later, Mike Murray walks to the podium and faces a panel of three Parks Department representatives.

“First, I would like to thank the City of New York for allowing me to display and sell my art in Union Square Park. It has been, probably, the most amazing experience of my life. It is how I make my living, 100 percent… I spend, on average, at least 40 hours a week in the parks. And I’ve seen the presence of the PEP officers. There’s at least three of them that walk around. But what I have yet to see is them enforce any of the rules. I watch them walk past table after table after table of illegal crap, and they don’t do anything. Where is the enforcement? And in terms of the 18 spots in Union Square. Are you kidding me? 18 spots? Am I going to get that spot? I spend almost all week making my artwork. I don’t have time to camp out at two in the morning to get a spot… I’ll never get that spot. And neither will any of you, any of the real artists.” The audience consists mainly of street artists, and they applaud Mike Murray’s speech. There’s no resolution by the end of the hearing. As of press time, the Parks Department has yet to announce whether it will enact the proposal—either as it was written or with changes.