NEW YORK — It's a case of public art gone horribly awry. Friends and colleagues of Takeshi Miyakawa have taken to Facebook to ask supporters to volunteer their character descriptions of the 50-year-old Japanese artist and designer in the hope of proving that he is not a terrorist, after his unauthorized tribute to his adopted city got him thrown in jail. “I believe this was a gross misunderstanding,” his attorney Deborah Blum told the New York Times, adding that Judge Martin P. Murphy intended to hold Miyakawa until he had undergone a psychological evaluation.
The trouble began on Friday afternoon, when passersby noticed a plastic bag stamped with the ever-popular “I ♥ NY” logo that appeared to be taped to a tree branch near the corner of Bedford Avenue and North 5th Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The bag, one of many that Miyakawa had hung from trees and lampposts around Brooklyn, contained a glowing LED light that would allow it to glow at night like a Chrismas tree ornament. Though the works were intended to express the artist's love of the city where he has lived since 1989, the NYPD had a different interpretation: Fearing the wired-up bag contained explosives, emergency service vehicles cordoned off the block where the bag was hanging, asked businesses to close, and ordered residents to leave their apartments.
Gothamist is now reporting that the person who made the first report of the plastic bag didn't even believe it to be a bomb, but had originally called 311 to simply “get that thing off my tree.”
Describing Miyakawa as a "sane, kind, and gentle human being," fellow artist Louis Lim has recounted the details of Miyakawa's arraignment with a palpable degree of disdain. In an email to ARTINFO, he now writes that Judge Murphy denied his friend bail against the recommendation of both the prosecutor and the arresting officer. “This is a ridiculous sentence that essentially denies him the opportunity to defend the charges he's on in the first place,” he told ARTINFO. “Furthermore, the paperwork of this mental health thing means an ambiguous incarceration time. We just want that mental evaluation dropped so he can get out.”