Jason Polan is a freelance artist living in New York City. He has exhibited work all over the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia. He is a member of The 53rd Street Biological Society and Taco Bell Drawing Club and his book Every Piece of Art in the Museum of Modern Art is a cult favorite. He has made over 100 limited edition books. Mr. Polan's illustrations and projects have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker,Believer Magazine, and ARTnews. He has done projects with Jack Spade, Warby Parker, Levi's, and The Ford Foundation. Polan is currently drawing every person in New York (he has drawn over 30,000 people).
"New Yorkers know that what makes NYC so special is the people who
live there. That's why artist Jason Polan challenged himself to
draw every person who lives in New York City, from the bodega
owners to A-list celebs. While the mission itself is impossible,
Polan has succeeded in compiling 36,000 sketches that capture the
hustle and bustle of the Big Apple and its quirky residents. In
addition to the sketches, you'll also want to check out the
entertaining foreword written by Kristin Wiig." --Real Simple
"In 2008, illustrator Jason Polan set out to capture the enormous
human poetics compressed in Gotham's geographic smallness by
drawing every person in the city. The first seven years of this
ongoing project, totaling drawings of 30,000 people, are now
collected in Every Person in New York--a marvelous tome of Polan's
black-and-white line drawings, colored in with the intense
aliveness of a city where, as E.B. White wrote more than half a
century earlier, 'wonderful events are taking place every minute.'
What emerges is a kind of poetry--fragmentary glimpses of ideas and
images, commanded by an internal rhythm to paint a complete whole
of this human hive." --Brain Pickings
"In 2008, Jason Polan set himself the challenge of drawing every
person in New York. Like Sufjan Stevens's aim to make 50 albums of
the United States, it was essentially an impossible project, but
what's come out of it is undoubtedly a success. The artist and Cut
collaborator has drawn an impressive 36,000-plus people to date,
and those sketches are all compiled in Every Person in New York,
along with a foreword by Kristen Wiig. It's out on August 18, with
a key addendum to its title: Volume 1. Thumb through a copy to find
sketches and scrawled captions of New Yorkers waiting in line,
subway riders, famous faces, and, if you've been to New York City
in the last seven years, maybe even yourself." --New York
magazine
"In 400+ pages and 30,000 people, Jason Polan presents a
big-hearted and humanistic picture of the city. He draws at museums
and on the subway, he draws his friends in loving detail and
celebrities in unposed real-time situations, like Yoko Ono walking
up the block away from him.... Getting to flip through years of his
work at home, freed from seeing it on Instagram, and being able to
look as closely and for as long as I like, has been one of the
chief pleasures of my summer, which is all a long way to say: I
think you will like this book." --Lucky Peach
"Jason Polan's drawings exude, in unbroken but flexible lines, the
momentum of a Manhattan streetscape with only brief moments of
stillness. Those pauses can last minutes or over an hour, enough
time for fully textured, impressionistic portraits. But more often
Mr. Polan's drawings are of scenes that pass in seconds: a father
ordering hot dogs for his stubborn children, or Diane Keaton trying
to hail a cab." --The New York Times
"This digest of sketches brings to life the everyday moments of New
Yorkers and finds a spark of excitement in the sometimes-banal
shuffle of city living." --Monocle magazine
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