October 9 - Subway Narrative

My Location: 14th St. down to Houston, between Broadway & 2nd Avenue

Subway Station #1: Astor Place (6 train local stop)

This untitled piece was done in 1986 by Milton Glaser, fabricated by Cherokee Porcelain Enamel Co. and commissioned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit, MTA New York City Transit and Committee for Astor Place. Milton Glaser is one of the most celebrated graphic designers in American History. He has had the distinction of one-man-shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Center. He was selected for the lifetime achievement award of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum (2004) and the Fulbright Association (2011), and in 2009 he was the first graphic designer to receive the National Medal of the Arts award. As a Fulbright scholar, Glaser studied with the painter, Giorgio Morandi in Bologna, and is an articulate spokesman for the ethical practice of design. He opened Milton Glaser, Inc. in 1974, and continues to produce a prolific amount of work in many fields of design to this day.

Glaser described his approach as, "basically a variation on the existing forms. By extracting fragments of the motifs on the tile panels, enlarging their scale, and placing these pieces in a random pattern, they take on the appearance of a puzzle." The result is a series of porcelain enamel panels in geometric patterns and color that echo the historic elements but present them in an entirely new way.

Subway Station #2: Bleecker Street Station (BDFM 6)

 

There are two public art installations in this station. The first is entitled "Signal" by Mei Chin.

Created in 1998 with ceramic tile, stainless steel, glass, and electrical components, this installation was commissioned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit, as well as MTA New York City Transit. This installation exists on two different levels of the subway station, and consists of the ceramic tiles on the wall and the illuminating steel pieces that encompass the bottom of the pillars in the station.

In Signal, artist Mel Chin, collaborating with Seneca tribe member Peter Jemison, draws upon the rich history of the Broadway and Lafayette crossroads, once a trading route for the tribes of the Six Nations. The mezzanine wall tiles depict figures from the nations with arms out-stretched to one another. The main concourse has conical forms at the base of support pillars shaped like campfires, used to send signals. Lights within these "campfires" brighten as trains approach and dim as they leave. Patterns within the steel forms derive from tribal badge patterns, that were based on a fusion of cultures. Another historical overlay is in the tile patterns around the concourse, they evoke rising smoke while the pattern is inspired by an Iroquois message of peace. In the artist's words, art should "provoke greater social awareness and responsibility," and this work demonstrates how this can be accomplished.

The second public art installation in the Bleecker Street Station is "Hive (Bleecker Street)" by Leo Villareal.

This color-changing, illuminating installation was created in 2012 with LED tubes, aluminum and stainless steel. It was fabricated by Parallel Development and commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit and Urban Design, as well as MTA New York City Transit. The LED sculpture takes the form of a honeycomb, dramatically filling an architectural space in the shape of an ellipse above the stairs that marks the new transfer point connecting the IRT and IND subway lines.

Hive (Bleecker Street) has a playful aspect in its reference to games. Riders will be able to identify individual elements within a larger context and track this movement. The work explores the compulsion to recognize patterns and the brain’s hard coded desire to understand and make meaning. The patterns also take inspiration from the research of the mathematician John Conway who invented the Game of Life, the best-known cellular automata program. Overall, the piece resonates with the activity of the station, transportation network and the city itself.