In New York City, unfamiliar faces greet you at every corner; from cursory glances exchanged by passing strangers on the sidewalk, to unreciprocated stares on the subway. But in Union Square, the busied hub of lower Manhattan, faces can be found in a more unlikely source: looking up at you from the ground.
These particular faces cannot talk, but their words are sometimes calcified in chalk speech bubbles drawn next to them.
They are the creation of Felix Morelo, a Colombian street artist, who has been regularly drawing them all over the gum-splotched hexagonal brick tiles that cover Union Square, as well as on neighboring city blocks, for the past three years. Now a neighborhood fixture, Morelo can also sometimes be seen sitting in Union Square with a cardboard sign offering free advice.
For casual admirers and fans of Morelo’s work alike, his chalk faces are often a source of amusement and encouragement. Fans who happen to catch Morelo in the act of drawing his faces will often stop to tell him that his work has cheered them up, on the way to wherever they may have been going. But to the contrary, the faces were born out of a much different emotion.
Looking out on Union Square from a wooden table in a Starbucks on 17th Street, Morelo described anger as the primary motive behind his street art. His face, while quick to break into a smile, instantly hardens when the topic of how he came to create his street art arises.
"People think it's happy, but it's not," said Morelo definitively.
Like generations of artists before him, Morelo has suffered in the pursuit of his art. He was forced to drop out of Parsons, just three credits shy of a earning a BFA, after he defaulted on his student loans. Since then, he has devoted himself to breaking into the art world while simultaneously struggling to support himself financially.
Amid a litany of odd jobs that included construction work, cutting meat as a butcher, and working as a bike messenger, Morelo hit a rough patch that included a period of homelessness, during which he lived on the streets.
“All my failures led me to do the faces,” said Morelo of his mounting frustrations.
But for an aspiring fine artist who found himself unable to catch the attention of the art world or get his own solo show (“I’ve never really been good at networking,” Morelo readily concedes) he was able to seek inspiration from another likeminded figure: a street artist named James De La Vega, who dismissed the gallery world in favor of publicly displayed chalk drawings.
“The big advantage [of chalk] is that it’s legal,” Morelo explained.
He added of De La Vega’s successful method that the trick is in taking simple phrases and “just repeating [them] over and over until you start getting recognized.”
Morelo’s signature phrase is probably his “bad luck spot,” a chalk circle drawn at random on the sidewalk that portends doom for anyone who should step in it.
The realization of quick, easily repeated catchphrases did not come to him immediately. He initially started experimenting with chalk by doing his usual drawings on the sidewalks around the city, until he found that it wasn’t working. That’s when Morelo says he came up with the faces, a theme that had already been pervasive throughout all his drawings. “They signified a longing or desire to be surrounded by people, rather than being homeless, or all alone, no girlfriend.”
When he started drawing faces on the ground at Union Square, a shape began to take hold. “The first time I did 50 faces, and everything clicked,” said Morelo. “I started realizing the pattern would disrupt the hexagon tiles.”
Even better, he found he could that he could churn out a large quantity of drawings in no time at all— each face took only seconds to draw. If he did an entire block of faces in this way, people would have to look at him.
To date, his most expansive project has been a series of faces that stretched from 10th Ave. to Avenue C. along 14th Street.
By making the move to street art Morelo feels that he has finally succeeded in forcing people to acknowledge him; or in his own words, to say, “Look at me motherfuckers! I may not be able to speak properly, but you’re going to look at my work.”
Now Morelo lives and maintains a studio in a space that he rents illegally with his girlfriend. His chief hope for the future is to get grants and fellowships that might enable him to focus on creating art for the rest of his life without having to worry about monetary limitations.
Although chalk is his signature, Morelo says he would love to get commissioned to do murals around the city. Chalk has its own downsides.
“It makes me sad, disappointed it’s not gonna last,” Morelo says of the drawings that gradually fade, sometimes washing away overnight if it rains. It’s like a metaphor for life, he says: “If you see it, take a photograph, because it’s only here for a moment.”
These particular faces cannot talk, but their words are sometimes calcified in chalk speech bubbles drawn next to them.
They are the creation of Felix Morelo, a Colombian street artist, who has been regularly drawing them all over the gum-splotched hexagonal brick tiles that cover Union Square, as well as on neighboring city blocks, for the past three years. Now a neighborhood fixture, Morelo can also sometimes be seen sitting in Union Square with a cardboard sign offering free advice.
For casual admirers and fans of Morelo’s work alike, his chalk faces are often a source of amusement and encouragement. Fans who happen to catch Morelo in the act of drawing his faces will often stop to tell him that his work has cheered them up, on the way to wherever they may have been going. But to the contrary, the faces were born out of a much different emotion.
Looking out on Union Square from a wooden table in a Starbucks on 17th Street, Morelo described anger as the primary motive behind his street art. His face, while quick to break into a smile, instantly hardens when the topic of how he came to create his street art arises.
"People think it's happy, but it's not," said Morelo definitively.
Like generations of artists before him, Morelo has suffered in the pursuit of his art. He was forced to drop out of Parsons, just three credits shy of a earning a BFA, after he defaulted on his student loans. Since then, he has devoted himself to breaking into the art world while simultaneously struggling to support himself financially.
Amid a litany of odd jobs that included construction work, cutting meat as a butcher, and working as a bike messenger, Morelo hit a rough patch that included a period of homelessness, during which he lived on the streets.
“All my failures led me to do the faces,” said Morelo of his mounting frustrations.
But for an aspiring fine artist who found himself unable to catch the attention of the art world or get his own solo show (“I’ve never really been good at networking,” Morelo readily concedes) he was able to seek inspiration from another likeminded figure: a street artist named James De La Vega, who dismissed the gallery world in favor of publicly displayed chalk drawings.
“The big advantage [of chalk] is that it’s legal,” Morelo explained.
He added of De La Vega’s successful method that the trick is in taking simple phrases and “just repeating [them] over and over until you start getting recognized.”
Morelo’s signature phrase is probably his “bad luck spot,” a chalk circle drawn at random on the sidewalk that portends doom for anyone who should step in it.
The realization of quick, easily repeated catchphrases did not come to him immediately. He initially started experimenting with chalk by doing his usual drawings on the sidewalks around the city, until he found that it wasn’t working. That’s when Morelo says he came up with the faces, a theme that had already been pervasive throughout all his drawings. “They signified a longing or desire to be surrounded by people, rather than being homeless, or all alone, no girlfriend.”
When he started drawing faces on the ground at Union Square, a shape began to take hold. “The first time I did 50 faces, and everything clicked,” said Morelo. “I started realizing the pattern would disrupt the hexagon tiles.”
Even better, he found he could that he could churn out a large quantity of drawings in no time at all— each face took only seconds to draw. If he did an entire block of faces in this way, people would have to look at him.
To date, his most expansive project has been a series of faces that stretched from 10th Ave. to Avenue C. along 14th Street.
By making the move to street art Morelo feels that he has finally succeeded in forcing people to acknowledge him; or in his own words, to say, “Look at me motherfuckers! I may not be able to speak properly, but you’re going to look at my work.”
Now Morelo lives and maintains a studio in a space that he rents illegally with his girlfriend. His chief hope for the future is to get grants and fellowships that might enable him to focus on creating art for the rest of his life without having to worry about monetary limitations.
Although chalk is his signature, Morelo says he would love to get commissioned to do murals around the city. Chalk has its own downsides.
“It makes me sad, disappointed it’s not gonna last,” Morelo says of the drawings that gradually fade, sometimes washing away overnight if it rains. It’s like a metaphor for life, he says: “If you see it, take a photograph, because it’s only here for a moment.”
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