Samuel Sebren

If you are walking down the street and see a handsome, tall dark haired man kneeling over a sidewalk grate or a manhole cover, it might be Samuel Sebren. A Manhattan artist, Sebren makes rubbings of manhole covers and other metal street accessories.

It can be a dangerous artistic pursuit--he’s narrowly avoided being hit by cars, but he says the rewards are worth it. At recent show in his uptown apartment/gallery, he displayed some 30 graphite works on paper. Most of the works are unadorned rubbings. Sebren, pointing to one of a NYC manhole cover emblazoned with stars on bright pink paper, said, “You just can’t improve on that.”

One rubbing of a sewer grate is oddly evocative of many things—tombstones, bullets, bombs or pills. Another resembles a ribcage or a formidable ab six-pack. What Sebren especially admires about the rubbings are the jagged edges. “I could never get that line quality without the rubbing,” he said, running his fingers along the outlines. Although on paper, most of art has a raised, embossed quality that adds a tony richness to the works.

Since it hasn’t been rubbing weather, he’s currently experimenting and improvising on his work. In one particularly stunning design, Sebren filled in the open outlines of a manhole cover with colors from plastic shopping bags, giving it an unexpected stain glass quality. While the medium is essentially free, he also likes it because it’s another form of recycling. Another work, entitled Manhattan BS, is a sly commentary on just that—discarded Lotto tickets adorn the top of a sewer cover.

Sebren was introduced to the art form at a young age. When he was ten, his parents showed him the technique in a graveyard in upstate New York. Back in the late 1980s, when he was living in Norfolk, Virginia, he was instrumental in saving the Wheat Building—Norfolk’s first skyscraper. “It’s only about 12 stories,” he said, “but the building looks like wheat. It has design elements that aren’t used anymore.” The building was scheduled to be torn down and replaced by—what else—a modern glass tower. Sebren went on a door-to-door campaign to raise awareness in Norfolk. He even managed to hang a banner from the top of the building pleading its preservation. The Wheat Building still stands, tall and proud, today.

Sebren sees his current work as another way of preserving what is fragile and easily lost or forgotten in New York. He pointed to a rubbing that said Water. Reflecting on how the sign is so simple and elegant outside of its street context, he said it is also a reminder of how much we take it for granted. “There are some places that don’t even have water, much less a sign telling you where it is.”

When asked where he finds the best objects, he said he goes all over the city, especially Chelsea, the Upper West Side and Chinatown. He refused to divulge any specifics, saying, “If I told you where I go, you will just look at that one place. I want you to look all over the whole city and see these things everywhere.”

Sam's art can also be viewed until March 3 at Protest Space, 511 West 20th St., NY NY

-Sherry Mazzocchi

Comments

[Amy Gahran]

Apologies for this off-topic comment, but we've been trying unsuccessfully to reach the editor of this site by e-mail.

J-Lab, The Institute for Interactive Journalism, is compiling a new online citizen journalism directory – part of the new KCNN.org citizen journalism resource site. We wanted to try once more to gather information on SITE for this directory.

Please take five minutes to fill out a brief online survey so we can include your site (for free).

Here is our survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=654963192812

DEADLINE: We need your response by Monday, Feb. 26. This is your final opportunity to be included in the debut version of this directory.

Due to respondents’ suggestions, we have restructured this survey so that all questions now appear on one web page. We also have reduced the number of required fields. So if you hesitated to respond before, please check out the revised survey.

Our survey requests descriptive information that will allow us to categorize your site, location information to place it on our Google Map navigation interface, and contact information for our internal use only (to keep the directory updated).

This online citizen journalism directory is sponsored by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland, as part of a forthcoming Knight Citizen News Network initiative, and by the Center for Citizen Media, jointly affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Law School.

Please help us track the rise of citizen journalism.

Questions: e-mail me at amy@ireporter.org

NOTE: If you’re responding after Feb. 26, the above survey link may not work. Please e-mail amy@ireporter.org for an updated survey link.

Thank you,

Amy Gahran of I, Reporter, on behalf of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism