New Yorkers have a special relationship with trash, which is as much a fixture of the cityscape as the Manhattan skyline. Not to wax romantic about littering, but some of that, shall we say, “street ephemera” – the lost tickets, photos, business cards – can give us the most honest, intimate window into the city’s stories. Which is partly why an outsider artist named John Evans used such found objects to make daily collages in his notebook, spanning from 1964 until the new millennium. Every page is its own time capsule. A puzzle and a portrait, telling stories of family, loneliness, and love; war, gentrification, and sexuality…
John Evans moved to NYC from South Dakota study art in the 1960s. When he arrived, his Avenue B flat was $35 a month, and the city was renowned for its bohemian scene. “It was not just the East Village, but a particular slice of New York,” said his former Chelsea gallery agent, Pavel Zoubok, about the late artist’s work in a piece for The Villager. Evans passed away in 2012, and continued his collages until 2000 – which seemed an appropriate time to stop, and close the chapter on almost half-a-century of NYC history…
“John was flawlessly a kind and gentle man,” says his friend Dana Llyod, “His works is as graceful as he was.” She adds that she lived on W. 12 Street, near Abingdon Square, but moved “when the Mercedes started parking in front of our walk-up.” Not Evans, though. He stayed put. A hardy New Yorker, he committed himself to reassembling the world that was disappearing before his eyes every day on paper, through the most (seemingly) trivial of details…
Goes to show how far a few gum wrappers, price tags, and paints can stretch if you put your mind (and heart) to it. Count it as #21 of the 20 things we’ll be doing in the coming weeks (instead of banging our heads against a wall).
See more of John Evans’ work on this wonderfully curated Instagram, and in the book John Evans: Collages, available on Amazon.
