The Mystery Man

This figure showed up one morning on the outer wall of a building downtown.  I come to this part of town a lot, for meetings and things.  He caught my eye.  I didn’t know quite what he was gesturing about.  The building whose wall he graces, however, has many vacant offices right now (commercial property, remember?)  Maybe he’s a sales gimmick. 

A week or so later I came down again for another meeting across the street.  I looked up at him, and he had a companion.  I got no decent picture of the second figure, unfortunately, so you’ll have to take my word for it.  In fact, the second figure was doing something rather rude to this guy.  

A woman named Jennie T., who attends the same workgroup I was meeting with, came up.  She saw where I was looking.  “Well, that’s interesting,” she said.  “How long has it been there?” 

“I don’t know.  Do you see two figures?” 

She squinted, then moved to where I was standing.  “Yes. . . yes, I do.  And he’s. . . what’s he doing with his hand?” 

I said, “How come we can’t see the second figure from over there, but we can from here?” 

We both thought it was a mystery, and then we went inside for our meeting.  When I came out an hour and a half later, the sun had, of course, risen higher in the sky, and the second figure was gone.  Completely.  I crossed the street and looked at the wall from another angle; no second figure. 

So, I decided I was crazy and had drawn Jennie into my madness.

 Two weeks later I took an employee who was retiring out to lunch at a restaurant diagonally across the street.  As we walked over, I looked back.  “How many figures do you see?”  I asked her. 

“Oh, there’s another one!  I wonder when they drew that up there.  I’ve seen the first one; he’s been there a while.” 

The second figure stayed visible this time, but when I went back (monthly workgroup meeting) there was only the one.  Was it magic paint?  A trick of light?  Ninja artists clambering up there in the dead of night to secretly scrub away the lines of one figure, then add them back a day or two later?  What did it all mean? 

You probably figured it out much sooner than I did.  The main figure—my mystery man—is not a drawing or a painting.  He is a wire sculpture hung by nearly-invisible lines.  In fact, he is a few inches away from the wall itself.  Presumably the disappearing second figure (or figures?) is also wire.  

Guerilla art!   Well played, ninja artists! Keep up the good work!