Lee B. Freeman's brief career has been fraught with peril. As a teenage graffiti artist in New York City, he survived scrapes with the law and pummeling from "concerned citizens," as he politely calls his assailants. In high school and now in college, at the Maryland Institute College of Art, he has weathered criticism from classmates and others. Harsh feedback in the name of art is OK with him.
This week, when a passerby spat on Freeman to protest his latest project - a series of gold spray-painted fences that closed off the parks encircling Mount Vernon Place - he remained unfazed. Everyone has a right to an opinion, Freeman says, though he wishes this particular observer had "expressed himself more productively."
But the young artist said he was reduced to tears on Thursday when, pressured by instructors, city officials and a legion of livid dog-walkers, he finally unlocked his golden cages, re-opening the park, where the Washington Monument stands, to the public a week ahead of time. He did this in the spirit of compromise. But he felt his work, part of an exhibit intended to focus attention on Mount Vernon Place, suffered, and that hurt more than the toughest critique.
"I cried because I don't know if I fought as hard as I could," said Freeman, who erected the gilded fence last weekend after obtaining the proper paperwork. "I fought so hard to get there, and then everything was taken away. I cried because I questioned myself. Did I give up? Did I give up on my project?"
First, a portrait of the artist as a 22-year-old MICA student: On Thursday Freeman wore a paint-dappled turquoise sweat shirt and a plaid fedora with a half-smoked cigarette stuck in its brim. He clutched a book of Robert Barry's conceptual art to his chest, along with his own sketchbook, which contained mysterious scribbled phrases ("the pursuit of freedom is inconvenient"). His fingernails were grubby, his wrist braceleted by rubber bands, his hazel eyes huge and searching. His voice was hoarse from all the spray-paint he's inhaled of late, and the endless "conversations" he's been having.
"Your project sucks!" someone screamed out the window of a car as Freeman sat in the park, watching his golden fence wobble in the wind. Such encounters count as conversation these days. So do irate phone calls (Freeman posted his contact information on his creation), scathing blog posts and bags of dog droppings tethered to the fence.
