Chance = Change

...the biggest public art project the New York City has ever seen...I was awake at 7:00am today, wrapping up to stay warm as I trudged to the 106th Street entrance to Central Park (today i discovered ,carved in stone ,the name of that entrance: Stranger's Gate...reminded me of the Traitor's Gate entrance to The Tower of London, though the Central Park entrance is far more benign in its history, I bet)...anyway, determined to witness this unique art event, I was there at the top of the Great Hill at 106th Street in Central Park, to see how the art would literally unfold...and I am glad I was there...Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude raised 20 million dollars , spent 20 years of work doing so, and after finally getting permission from NYC to even install the thing at all...they financed this project through the sale of related art works, like drawings or lithographs of the project..all the proceeds from "The Gates" souvenirs sales will go to the Central park Conservancy and Nurture New York's Nature..and here is a basic decription of what "The Gates" is and what I , partially , saw: Stretching along 23 miles of Central Park footpaths,the project consists of more than 7,500 pleated, saffron -colored panels billowing from vinyl "gates" or frames. When I first got there, the numerous frames I was able to see, maybe about 100 or so of them, set at approximately 12' intervals, were all "empty" in the sense that none of the flags had been released yet, but were contained at the top of each frame , packaged, ready to be undone...which is what happened at about 8:30 am, when teams of 6-8 people, (some of whom requested to be part of this project as long ago as 3 or 4 years, when they were first able to apply on-line to assist)...well, these teams came along, to the cheers of the growing crowd (when I first got there , there were only maybe 10 people and their doggies)..anyway, these teams, at a synchronized time communicated by walkie-talkies, pulled a strip of saffron colored plastic by reaching up with a long hook-like thing ,hooking into a round metal thing at one end, and pulling it across the rolled flag, creating a "zzzzzzzzzip" sound as it came undone, immediately after which these elegant, pleated, saffron silky panels fell gracefully down to about halfway the height of the frames....well above the heads of even the tallest person who would walk under them...one by one, flag by flag, the gates burst into color. All the same, uniform saffron....and one by one, the flags were released into their destined flowing life. The crowd of people, a lot taking photos of the event, some home movies, some talking on cell phones to others who were not there (I called Frank and Eliza Ventura out at their Hamptons house to include them in the event, since it was Frank who first reminded me to pay attention to it when we got home from London...the crowd followed the clumps of flag-releasing volunteers....a very communcal, shared event. Terrific. Provocative and warming, it was so joyful.So glad to be home. So very glad to be able to be part of such a thing, and not just read about it.