Lifestyle
Interview with a Street Artist: Joe Mangrum, the Sand Painter
While walking through any given park in New York, what type of creative would you expect to encounter? There are all the predictable performers such as guitarists, perhaps a living statue, and of course the young break dancers bouncing around the halls of subway cars or gathering crowds in the park before jumping over some poor tourist’s kid. No one would be surprised to see these type of performers in any given city in America. What about someone who pours sand on the ground? No… not a sandcastle. What if you walked down the street and saw something like this:
This insane and psychedelic pattern is what I saw one day walking through Washington Square Park while looking for the world’s largest Corgi Meetup (that’s a story for another day). Above the geometrically complex shape growing on the ground, I saw a man hunched over his hands dusty with grains of many colors, adding more orbiting patterns to the piece. His name was Joe Mangrum. Joe makes some badass pieces of temporary art, fragile patterns that most often take the form of intricate mandalas. Here’s what he had to say about his experiences as a street artist:
1. When we met you mentioned you’ve been doing this for 6 years now. What were you doing before and at what moment did you decide you would do this full time?
2. Which do you like better and why: creating art in a studio or creating art in public spaces like Washington Square Park?
I like both for very different reasons. The public space allows for an interaction in real time with people who are not necessarily the type that go to art galleries, they have spontaneous reactions that are real insightful in ways, they inform me and feed me with lively discussion, on the flip-side there are plenty of people that are just walking on their phone and not paying attention that can be destructive to such a delicate work. The studio offers the freedom of time.I can spend as long asI want on a single piece of work… you just can’t go that deep and make changes with the limited time set by the sun wind and weather in the public space. Its gotta be swept away when I leave for the day.
3. While working in public spaces, what was your best/most surprising experience?
I have had some people get emotional over the years but one time went furthering a person came up and said that I had saved their life? Upon further inquiry they said they were suicidal and for six months had come out to see my work before working up the courage to speak to me, it gave them hope, and it hit me in a profound way, that my work over so many years may have that sort of impact on so many unknown people, its a little scary and at the same time humbling.
4. What was the worst?
I can’t say any one instance is the worst, but being in public a lot you are vulnerable to whatever comes your way on any given day. People can be rude and entitled or just plain oblivious, the cumulation can get you down at times. Occasionally there is a mental unstable person you have to deal with and I just do my best to use non-violent communication to defuse and deescalate any potentially crazy situation, its sad, but it makes me feel good that I’ve honed these skills enough handle some potentially violent people over the years who just don’t have their world in the place they want it.
5. How much would you say you earn from tips on average while working in public?
Its really irrelevant, I survive in NYC.
6. Tell me about a time when your work was destroyed
7. Tell me why you feel compelled to create
I create because it teaches me something new about myself about the world on a daily basis… there is a lot of knowledge to be gained by my process still.
