Public Art at Mount Vernon's Metro-North Stations

Artist: Marjorie Blackwell, Faceted glass in platform windscreen

Did you know that there is a grove of trees, a lake, and sky, in shades of green, blue, and yellow at the Mount Vernon East train station?  MTA's public art projects just might make you think so. 

There are three Metro-North stations in Mount Vernon.  In the hustle and bustle of daily commuting, one may not notice that there are public art installations at the Mount Vernon East, Mount Vernon West, and Fleetwood train stations. The Metropolitan Transit Authority's Arts for Transit program, administers the commissions work of artists throughout its vast network of subway and commuter rail stations.  

Here are a few recent photographs of familiar pieces that are seen (but not always noted) by thousands daily.  The text is courtesy of the MTA.  

Mount Vernon East, Metro-North New Haven Line: Tranquility, 2001

Tranquility's 12 faceted glass windscreen panels at the Mount Vernon station convey the shimmering quality of Impressionism in stained glass. The artwork creates the atmosphere of the country through her imagery and color palette, brightening the commuter rail station. As its title implies, the work is calming in its depiction of a natural environment with a grove of trees, a lake, and sky, in shades of green, blue, and yellow. Artist Marjorie Blackwell wanted "the colors and how they are shaped and dance across the windscreen" to give commuters "something to play with, meditate with, and connect with at the station."

Mount Vernon West, Metro-North Harlem Line: Travelin' Time, 1991

Artist: Martha Jackson-Jarvis

Glass and ceramic mosaic sculpture on waiting room ceiling.

Martha Jackson-Jarvis has experimented with the qualities of clay, glazes, and firing methods for most of her career and she welcomes the surprise and chance occurrences that are part of working with natural materials. In the words of the artist, "Conceptually, Travelin' Time occupies transitional space. It is a space between points, a place of resting, of waiting, of new beginnings and departures.   Though Mount Vernon station is indeed public space, it still remains an intimate space where human scale and pace are slowed momentarily. It is a space in which we are asked to wait . . . and while waiting contemplate traveling through time and space to distances unknown, yet familiar."

Fleetwood, Metro-North Harlem Line:  Time Catcher, 1990

Artist: Arthur Gonzalez

Bronze sculpture on interior overpass wall

Arthur Gonzalez has created a monumental serial artwork with large-scale bronze figures that are located at three stations on MTA Metro-North Railroad's Harlem line. The work uses the themes of time and travel as the central focus. Time Catcher at Fleetwood is a polychrome bronze featuring a historic map of the region and a worker with his tools, a tribute to those who built the railroad. (The Crestwood and Tuckahoe stations have the two other works in the series.)