As the workers were busy completing the construction of the brand new train station Grand Central Madison in November, artist Kiki Smith standing in front of her new mosaic “River Light,” an abstract, blue and white depiction of sunlight glistening over the East River.
“I’ve never done mosaics,” she said, pausing to touch the various surfaces of the small and colorful pieces of glass that make up the composition. She added, “I have never done anything so great in my life either.”
The 80-foot facility on the Madison Concourse floor of Grand Central Madison, the $700,000-square-foot Long Island Rail Road station, valued at $11.1 billion, opens in December. The station is the agency’s largest project. Urban Transport Authority.
At a time of growing safety concerns and subway ridership still recovering, some may question the MTA’s spending money on art, despite the cost of the show. art, $1.4 million, represents just 0.01% of the station’s total budget.
Rachael Fauss, senior policy advisor to the monitoring group Reinventing Albany, says that while she herself is not opposed to art programming, it is “part of the larger problem of having expensive, unique stations,” than the conscious standardization route. more on cost. “When it comes to form rather than function, and across the system as a whole, that adds up over time,” says Fauss.
Hosted by MTA Art & DesignAuthorized art at Grand Central Madison includes photography by Paul Pfeiffer, the first part of a rotating lightbox exhibition programmed in collaboration with the International Center of Photography. In addition, five large LED screens will display the digital works of Gabriel Barcia-Colombo, Jordan Bruner and Red Nose Factoryfocus on 3-D illustration and animation.
Those passing through the station will also come across four other glass mosaics by Smith and a 120-foot painting by the artist Yayoi Kusama.
Thematically, Smith’s works are all about nature, with particular attention to the flora and fauna of Long Island — the wild turkeys depicted in his “Spring” mosaic. she is poised to become a commuter favorite — and the digital and photographic works both depict some aspect of city life, in all its bustling and eccentric glory.
Smith has never relied on bold colors to make an impression with her work, and this project has pushed her in a new direction, shown in the yellow, blue and red splashes that make up the chickens. west. “This is a way to interact with color,” she says.
Kusama, now living in Tokyo, was a New Yorker from 1958 to 1975. Her 120 foot mosaic – “Message of Love, Directly From My Heart to the Universe” (2022), also in Madison Concourse – epitomizes her signature recent work style, in a vibrant Pop-influenced work that has earned her a fierce reputation late in her career, at a young age. ninety three.
Transportation in New York City
An extension of her surreal and funny.”My Eternal Soul” series of paintings and immersive rooms, the vibrant multi-color composition depicts a fanciful cosmic party of all kinds, with smiling faces like the sun hovering next to amoeba-like shapes, one of the Her familiar pumpkins and combinations of abstract forms.
Kusama said in an email that the station location inspired her to portray various characters coming and going.
“It could be you, it could be me,” she said.
Kusama added that she remembers taking the subway all over New York, specifically going to libraries, museums and theaters.
Public transport is also the setting for at least one of her groundbreaking “events,” as one calls public art interventions.
“I once had a nude scene that happened at a subway station,” Kusama said, referring to the last iteration of her “Anatomical Explosions” series, in November 1968.” The police arrived immediately, so it only took a few minutes and I left with the dancers, but it was a sight.
A committee of art professionals and shipping agency staff selected Smith and Kusama in 2020, after calling for a portfolio. “It is a highly competitive process,” said Sandra Bloodworth, director of MTA Arts & Design. There were seven finalists and the selected women made proposals that were very close to the finished design. In the past, both artists have produced much more provocative and dramatic work than their Grand Central Madison, which Bloodworth said reflects their savvy approach.
“Artists are very smart,” she said. “When they enter the public sphere, they become aware of what works in that environment.”
A New York sensibility infused with 10 photographs of Pfeiffer, a series called “Still Life”, depicting a street performer in Times Square Da Gold Man (real name: Travis Hartfield)known for his immobile posture and covered in gold paint.
“I wanted to do something that reflected the environment in which these images appeared,” says Pfeiffer.
He describes the result, shot in the studio, as a cross between a fashion shoot and a still life work.
Pfeiffer said of Hartfield: “I use my commissions to enhance his performance. “It was a collaboration with him.”
Locals come to life in Barcia-Colombo’s five-channel video production, “The Foundation,” featuring 40 slow-motion New Yorkers. He put out social media casting calls for some to join and found others on the street.
“We were too isolated during the pandemic,” Barcia-Colombo said. This is about being in a crowd again.
Barcia-Colombo adds that a digital component is a good complement to the mosaic, traditional New York media for public transit art.
“Digital art is the future of public art,” he said. “All of these stations have screens inside. It’s an entry point for everyone.
With his five works, Smith has the biggest mark on the project. She said that “River Light” was inspired by the trip.
“People are going down the East River to come here and back,” she said. “You’re on a journey through water.” The patterns seem to form stars in some places, which she says beautifully The famous “heaven” of Grand Central Terminal.
One floor below Madison Concourse, on the Mezzanine of the Long Island Railroad, are four of her other works, all housed in vaulted alcoves: “The Water’s Way,” a rocky beach scene; “Presence,” a landscape with a lone deer; “Spring,” with four turkeys among the lush vegetation; and “The Sound” a seascape with a large seagull.
“I want places where people say, ‘See you with the deer,’” Smith said. “Something different.”
Smith grew up in New Jersey and became a New Yorker in 1976; now she spends most of her time at a house in the Hudson Valley. Early in her career, she was known for her figurative work, especially those depicting the female body, and over time she turned to using nature as a springboard for her art.
She based all of her mosaics on earlier work. “River Light” was first a photo, then a cyan type, but it looks very different in its mosaic incarnation.
“I use a lot of the same images over and over,” says Smith. “And then I change the material or the proportions.”
What followed was a process that took more than two years, a complicated back-and-forth to turn her ideas into tiny shards of glass.
First, Smith sent her original artwork to a specialized studio she had previously worked with to make tapestries. Magnolia version, in Oakland, Calif. That stage helped her get different images into one big composition.
Smith worked with a respected mosaic specialist founded in the 19th century, the German company Franz Mayer of Munich. (Kusama and her studio worked with Miotto’s Mosaic Art Studio by Carmel, New York)
Smith, who had been to Munich four times for the Grand Central Madison project, and had previously worked with Mayer on making stained glass, had to get used to giving up some control. Mayer’s artisans are the ones who divide her work into its component parts.
“The first time I did it, I had such a panic attack,” Smith said. “Generally I do my own work.”
She added, “That’s the thing about the puzzle — it’s a relationship of trust.”
Just as Kusama’s work celebrates the diverse communities gathered at a train station, Smith has great respect for how art and architecture can enhance civic life.
That was instilled by her father, the famous sculptor Tony Smith (1912–1980), especially when he took the whole family on a pilgrimage in 1963.
“My father took me, my sisters, and my mother to Penn Station, before it was demolished,” Smith recalled the now-famous three-year demolition of the Beaux-Arts landmark in 1910. designed by McKim, Mead & White. Smith was 9 years old at the time.
As she prepares to explore her contribution to an important new chapter in the city’s infrastructure story, she recalls that her father’s response “made a big impression on me.”
Smith said: “He cried and cried.
