Free Art Lifts Downtown Spirits

By Ronald Drenger

"May I give you the gift of art?"

With these words, more than 4,000 watercolors were handed to commuters, firefighters, cops, and assorted other Downtowners last month, in an creative effort to lift their spirits.

The 9-by-12-inch paintings were created and sent to New York by Mark Malmgren, an amateur artist from Clemson, S.C., as tokens of support to counter, in some small way, the effects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Malmgren, who runs a travel agency, began the paintings four days after the tragedy. Waking up at 3 every morning to work for four hours, he churned out 75 watercolors a night—mostly flowers in vases, with a few trees and houses here and there—until he completed 4,316 of them, one for every innocent person then believed to have been killed.

Malmgren’s inspiration for the project came from his 22-year-old daughter, Kerri, who moved to New York last spring. After the disaster, she and some of her friends waited in line for almost 10 hours to donate blood.

"At first, the cynical part of me felt that what she did was almost inconsequential," Malmgren said in a phone interview. "Then I thought, each contribution is small relative to the tragedy but, collectively, everyone doing something makes a difference."

To do the large number of paintings, Malmgren could spend no more than four minutes on each. For the first thousand, he kept asking himself if they were good enough to give people. "But I finally gave up that idea. They’re pretty simple, but I like that. I’d like people to see the beauty in the simplicity."

Malmgren, who has been painting for three years, had a tough time finding enough art supplies. After buying up every watercolor pad from local stores, he had to special-order them.

When he was close to finishing, he contacted New York galleries and nonprofit organizations, eventually finding Creative Time, an organization that commissions public art. The group suggested distributing the works in Lower Manhattan and, together with the Alliance for Downtown New York, helped him do it.

On the morning of Dec. 20, Kerri, along with Creative Time’s Anne Pasternak and Sarah Bacon, gave away hundreds of paintings at subway stations, firehouses, the First Precinct, office buildings, and other locations.

Many passersby, inured to people handing out leaflets on the streets, ignored the offering of free art. Others threw out the paintings without a glance. One grateful recipient dug through trash to retrieve a few pieces, which she passed out to colleagues at work.

"People were skeptical," said Kerri. "They thought we wanted a donation." But when a few people stopped to talk, others followed suit. "They were so appreciative."

E-mails to Creative Time revealed just how appreciative they were.

"To say it made my day would be an understatement," wrote one woman, who had received a painting as she got off a ferry from New Jersey. "It brought tears to my eyes and joy to my heart."

"Art made in the spirit of love is the best antidote for evil," another person wrote.

The gesture warmed Kerri’s heart in a more personal way. "I can’t say I ever felt so intensely proud of my dad in my life," she said.