Two weeks after being released from Rikers Island for installing "I Love NY" bags on trees in Williamsburg, only to cause a bomb scare, artist and designer Takeshi Miyakawa spoke to the NY Times about the experience. One imposing inmate told him on his third and final night at Rikers, "All these famous artists suffered before they became famous."
Miyakawa was apparently startled by his incarceration: "He described the humiliation of being transported in handcuffs, the sleepless nights in the freezing cells, the challenge of the very public toilets. (He spent one night in a police precinct, and another in a group cell before being transferred to Rikers Island.)" However, there was a silver lining:
But he found the inmates kind and curious. They gave him soap and a toothbrush, taught him to play Aces, offered fist bumps and words of encouragement. They threw their arms around his shoulders and posed for mock-photographs, miming a camera; they brandished newspaper articles on his arrest, and asked him to autograph them.
Miyakawa is due in court on June 21, and his lawyer hopes to get the charges of planting false bombs dropped or reduced. The tipster who contacted 311 about the bags—311 then told him to contact 911—told us he thought it was probably some sort of art project.
But Rafael Vinoly, the famed architect who employs Miyakawa as a model maker and wrote a character reference for Miyakawa, had strong words about guerrilla/unexpected art, telling the Times, "It was a stupid mistake. A piece of visceral public art is like architecture. I can’t build a building without getting a permit. All he needed to do was ask for permission. I don’t like people to suffer for things that aren’t really necessary."
