Few people walking down Tribeca’s Staple Street would notice a small opening in the bottom of the covered bridge, almost exactly in the middle and no bigger than a dollar coin. But the artist James Nares knows it well. He put the hole there back in 1976—a small reminder of the street’s starring role in the art scene that flourished in Tribeca in those days.

“I can just make out the hole,” Nares said, pointing up at the bridge during a recent visit to Staple Street. “I made a film through the hole looking at the street below. And I used to drop water, stones and metal objects through it to see what would happen.”

Nares, 58,  lived and worked in Tribeca for the first six years of a broad-ranging career that has most recently gained acclaim for his striking single brushstroke paintings of saturated color. Now the art and films Nares made in Tribeca, with Jay and Staple Streets as the grainy backdrop, are the subject of an exhibition at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in Chelsea, “1976: Movies, Photographs and Related Works on Paper.” The work on display, photos of pendulums and solid balls cast in concrete that he used in films as well as the film themselves, are a time capsule of Nares’ early interest in gravity and movement, and of what was then a little noticed street.

At the time there was a flimsy metal catwalk that spanned the street. Nares decided to suspend a large copper ball from it and film the sphere as it swung across the street like a wrecking ball. The short movie “Pendulum” is the highlight of the exhibition.

“Tribeca was like a giant playground for us,” Nares said. “It was really empty and very beautiful in its decay.”

The artist had arrived on Jay Street in 1974 from England enticed by a friend’s tales of bumping into Robert Rauschenberg in a bar.  “I read everything about the New York art scene; they were doing things that nobody talked about in England,” he recalled.

From 1974 to 1980, Nares  lived in 9, 11 and 13 Jay Street. In 1976, his studio was in Number 9 and for a year-and-a-half he used the connecting covered bridge as his bedroom.

“It was freezing in winter and boiling in summer,” he said. “I loved it. Not many people get to sleep in a bridge across a street in New York City. It was irresistable.”  

That middle ground plays a central role in  “Pendulum.” The ball swings back and forth in the space below skimming just a few inches above the road. There are glimpses of neighborhood life. A child stands at the side of the street. A lone car can be seen in the background. Litter blows by like tumbleweed. In another film, “Ramp,” Nares rolled a concrete ball down the exit ramp of the abandoned West Side highway. “We felt we owned the place. It never occurred to me that I might need a permit.”

Nares was part of the vibrant artists community in the neighborhood where there was, as he put it,  “a tremendous exchange of ideas." 

The artists set up impromptu movie theatres in empty garages and explored deserted warehouses. In one vacant building on Jay Street they found an abandoned fall-out shelter with huge cans of survival biscuits.  “We were very short of money and so we lived on these super protein-packed rather nasty tasting survival biscuits for a while. They had everything you needed to keep you alive.”

For fun, Nares and artist friends made their way onto the roof of the newly built, 39-story Independence Plaza. “We went up with big rolls of ticker tape we had found and held them up into the wind. They spiraled out in this line for miles across the Hudson River. It was, I suppose, very beautiful littering.”

As businesses continued to move out, Nares picked up part-time work demolishing old safes. “All the warehouses had these huge cast iron safes filled with some kind of fire brick. It would take three of us the best part of the day to destroy these things with sledgehammers in the middle of the street.”

To his regret Nares refused an offer to buy 11 Jay Street where he lived and worked.  It was available for the princely sum of $60,000.

“At the time I had no interest in owning a building,” he said with a smile.

By 1980, Nares felt the pull of the newly vibrant East Village and it was time to move on. He has since landed in Brooklyn, in a house with a garden and a cherry tree. But the artist has never lost his affection for Tribeca both old and new, the site of his first experiments of art in America.

“It was a very important time for me,” he said. “I always get a little buzz when I walk past Staple Street.”

“1976: Films and Other Works” by James Nares, through Feb. 11 at Paul Kasmin Gallery, 515 W. 27 St. Gallery hours: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m, Tuesdays-Saturdays. paulkasmingallery.com