Composition 360

First, pick an object ahead of you to look at. Something stationary. Like the knot on the trunk of that elm. Then imagine this object as a mirror image the same height and distance behind you. Third, note your placement in relation to two other markers—the drinking fountain and the lamppost, let’s say. Lastly, picture your heels rooting into the ground and the top of your skull drawn up by a wire. By these six points you fix course.

“They’re called ‘living statues,’ sweetheart.” The woman lays a hand on her four-year-old’s shoulder. “Though sometimes they’re based on famous people or paintings. This one is Mona Lisa. There’s a person inside that frame.”

Above us, the tree limbs creak and groan, their leaves in perpetual, almost violent, motion compared to your own established locus.

“Isn’t that amazing, Lance? You’ll see her move if you wait long enough.”

Young children are either terrified or will step right up and touch you. Those who touch are the mischievous type—little Lance or Anna or Meixing or Seth—daring the world around them to prove itself unreliable.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart? Hush. Come to Mommy. It’s OK. Shall we give the nice lady a dollar? Or is that a man, George?”

From an indeterminate point of origin, the trill of steel drums sends a languid “Let It Be” through the park. In the morning breeze, a candy-bar wrapper scrapes along the pavement. This is trampled by a gang of pigeons rushing toward bits of a broken cookie dropped moments ago by a skateboarder.

Adding to the visual tumult, little Lance and his parents start to exit the plaza. We see other people flooding in to replace them—families, couples, groups of different sizes, the unaccompanied. The pigeons collectively burst from the ground, startled by the shadow of a circling hawk.

Lance breaks from his parents’ grip and turns. The child appears to be gazing in your direction, though he may be looking for the now-vanished pigeons. A few gray and white feathers switchback through the air. He is taken in hand by Mommy and Daddy and forced into their trajectory: restrooms, concession stand, a walk through Sheep Meadow.

From your left, out of sight, but distinctly audible: “I guess she never made it to Broadway. Pathetic.”

And the amateur comedian/photographer: “Say cheese!” “Hold still!” “A little to the left, would ya?”

Though the gender illusion goes largely unremarked.

Most perplexing is the man with the video camera on the bench by the hot dog vendor. Every day, he sets up his tripod in the same place, following some strange compulsion to document the scene—this gathering of performers or the reactions of those who watch them. He shoots for exactly one hour each morning, then packs up and leaves without once engaging with the artists or offering a donation.

Weather permitting, your working hours coincide with the Central Park Carousel’s, its canned organ music marking start and end times. By now, however, it has become second nature for you to measure conventional time, attuned to the subtle advance and retreat of shadows (yours, too) over paving stones and park furniture.

A common Latin inscription on ancient sundials reads: Horas non numero nisi serenas—I count only the bright hours. But to count would make a prison of your art. Instead, you mentally transition elsewhere. To a place of calm or intrigue or beauty.

And in Leonardo’s painting, doesn’t the landscape behind the subject seem to be a projection of her own arcadian psyche? To her left—as those who have studied the picture can affirm—a winding road cuts through a gorge. To her right, farther off, a river is spanned by a Roman bridge. Beyond these lies a bay or an inlet flanked by craggy mountains rendered as if seen through haze. As is the glacier-like mass on the horizon. Above it all stretches a pewter-colored sky.

Though this detailed landscape isn’t part of your assemblage, you conjure it as a way of...