Meet the Artist
- Mr. Nilsen

One July day last year Mark Nilsen was strolling through New York City and stumbled over a penny on the street. Low on cash and in need of a little luck he pocketed it. Further down the block he found two more pennies, later a nickel and a quarter. "Hmmm," he thought "I wonder how much more I can find on the street?"

Large round sewer covers - unpocketable 100 pound coins - scattered all over the City came to Nilsen's attention. That summer night he set out to develop a technique to capture the manholes on canvas. In front of his house on West 46th Street, he put a piece of raw canvas right on top of a 'NYC Sewer', dipped a roller into color and created his first streetscape painting.

That first "rubbing with paint" of a manhole cover and the concrete surrounding it, opened Nilsen's eyes to the often overlooked beauty of the street relief. It was the start of a passion for the stone, steel and dirt that form the surface we walk on. Nilsen now sees the street as "a huge work in progress - a fascinating mix of old cobbles and new concrete, grates and cast-iron lids patched together to hide the city's secret underground blood vessels of sewage and supply systems."

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Meet the Artist - Mr. Nilsen
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Look at Mark Nilsen's paintings»
More photos of sewer covers»

The artist Mark Nilsen

The 'NYC Sewer' cover
in front of Mark Nilsen's house