Arts & Entertainment Economics Lifestyle & Culture

Where the sidewalk is an art studio

By Liz Namgung

In the winter of 2000, Fejzo stepped onto the jet bridge at John F. Kennedy airport, bags heavy with art supplies from Albania. He began drawing as a child. Now, at 48, living in his adopted city, portrait sketching has become his full-time job. 

His workspace isn’t the standard walled, windowed studio. It’s the outdoors of Central Park. Fejzo’s in a soundscape of laughing children, the soles of joggers’ shoes hitting graveled paths just off Bow Bridge, birds chirping. 

“I like that it’s calm here,” he says. 

While other portraitists took off to the touristed sidewalks of Times Square, Fejzo has stayed right where he began. For 25 years, he’s stayed roughly in that same spot near Bow Bridge, in the middle of the park, along an imaginary line that connects to 72nd Street on the West Side.  Weather-permitting, he’s there seven days a week, hustling, starting in the early morning.

Within Fejzo’s sightline that July day was an immigrant from China who sketches caricatures of real people, using charcoal. He situates his customers on a stool with wooden legs and an upholstered seat that appears to have once been white. He sits across from them, on a second stool. A friend translates what, perhaps, was Mandarin for the Asian artist who’s been featured in the Columbia University Spectator but refuses to give this reporter his name. 

He came to the United States from China 12 years ago through an artists’ visa program. He’s been doing art for 45 years, he says. “The one on the other side of the path,” he says, referring to Fejzo. Post-pandemic, eight street portrait artists he knew left their sidewalk in their chosen area of Central Park. 

“I come here because I have to,” the Chinese man said, through his translating friend. Yes, he’s an artist, he continued. But his work is a way to make ends meet, not a performance.

On the other hand, Fejzo’s wife works full-time. Their two kids are in college, he says. “It’s not only for money that I work.” If the job of painting other people, drawing from their emotions, doesn’t bring you joy, you can’t do it well, he says.

Both men say they’ve gauged the state of the U.S. economy by the ebb and flow of demand for their artistry.

“If the economy is bad, the last thing people need is art,” Fezjo says. “Before the pandemic, it was good. Business was very good. After, it changed. It’s very changed now. And not for good.”

Their observations aren’t just anecdotal. A team of researchers, led by the University of Florida’s Weizhe Weng, concluded that visits to Central Park and 20 other New York City Parks fell 94% during the early months of the pandemic. Visitation didn’t return to normal for a while. In 2022, international tourists made up only 26% of all visitors to New York City, down from 29% in 2019.

Fewer and fewer customers are coming, the artists say. Twelve years ago, the Asian artist was commanding $50 to $100 a portrait. Now, he’ll take whatever he can get, even if it’s a mere $20 for an hour’s work.

On good days, they get to do up to four drawings. Sometimes, they go days without a single customer. 

If language were not such a barrier, the Chinese man says, he’d try to find more stable work elsewhere. 

“I’m an artist. This is the only way I know how to make money for a living.” 

Fejzo doesn’t feel that pressure. “I know I won’t lose [my job] because people like art. I might make less, but it won’t go away.” 

He was tucking in the legs of his chair with the extendable legs, preparing to stuff it back into the little space left in his cooler.

“With no art,” he says, “how can we be people?”