High Line Blog

This afternoon, sixty 8th-grade art students from the Lab School for Collaborative Studies donned tall, blocky shoes made of green chalk and scuffed West along the streets of Chelsea and the Meatpacking District, drawing chalk lines with their feet that ended at three future access points to the High Line.

The choreographed performance was Chalk Shoes to the High Line, a project we created with performance artist Julia Mandle, as part of our ongoing education program with the Lab School. (Today’s walk was the culmination of a unit on performance art, which we certainly never learned about in middle school!)

Hopefully you caught the performance on the street today or saw the bold green chalk lines it left behind.  If not, you can check out an exhibition of the chalk shoes, as well as photos and video of the performance, at the Leo Kesting Gallery starting May 15.

More photos after the jump.

[The group fanned out, creating patterns on the pavement of the new pedestrian plaza at Ninth Avenue and 14th Street.]

[The choreography of the walk created a long, unbroken arrow pointing West.]

[After the performance, students signed the work at three locations: Gansevoort Street, 14th Street and 18th Street.]

[Perfomers carried their worn-down shoes to be stored before they are displayed at Leo Kesting next month.]