Last week dancer and choreographer Hope Mohr and I continued our exploration of movement and mark making by unfurling a large roll of white paper onto the sidewalk across the street from my studio on Folsom Street in San Francisco. The paper was the length of a city block and it created just the right slow contrast to the 9:00 am rush of commuters and traffic. Hope and I bowed to each other in our stocking feet and then squatted down on all fours and began drawing a small black line from each end of the white scroll.

We did not rise above the level of our knees, often rolling on to our backs or half crawling as we kept the black marker moving continuously across the white promise of the paper. We moved slowly, shifting from fetal position to a curled roll, back to a fetal position. Sometimes we lifted the pen above our heads as we rolled, dragging the black line with us as we moved inch-by-inch closer toward the other end of the long white pathway. With our faces so close to the ground the only thing we could see was the line as it emerged from the tip of our drawing tool. Occasionally, light flickered across the white surface of the paper when a series of cars sped by. Pedestrians on the sidewalk approached with curious respect or perhaps dismissal.

They avoided stepping on the white path along the concrete. Some slowed down long enough to watch. Others kept a safe and uninterrupted clip to their pace on the way to the office. A young man bent down to snap a few pictures on his cell phone. Except for insects moving between the cracks in the sidewalk, Hope and I were the slowest moving creatures on the street. We were two women relishing the useless, but oh- so-necessary act of drawing a slow line down the sidewalk on a Friday in September of the year 2014. Thanks to artist Georgia Smith for sharing these images.