Nat Coppedge (untitled), ink, 2009
Isaac Canady, Teepee, colored ink, 2009
Stilt walkers and guitarist are not the only performers to find their way to city streets. A walk down Commercial in Provincetown with its offerings of sidewalk portraits and henna painting is celebratory evidence of busker art, made for immediate exchange. We have our own good examples here in New Haven. I met Nat Coppedge, a self-described “hypercubist,” in a Chapel Street coffee shop, with sheets of “abstract calligraphy” in black scattered on the table in front of him, along with pamphlets of lyrically opaque meditations on language.
Isaac Canady’s work is perhaps more familiar, as he moves from a Starbucks front window to a Broadway sidewalk to Edge of the Woods. His profuse and mutating forms are like blueprints for an imaginary universe, each one full of his pleasure at their making