Ellen Driscoll's Passages

fresh photo-based murals in Grand Central Terminal funnels give passengers on the move swiftly a different sense of time and place.

of recent origin tunnels at New York's Grand Central Terminal allow commuter arriving upon the Metro North Railroad to exit from the north extreme points of the platforms, rather than having to make progress south and enter the terminal to reach way level and turn north to the midtown office district. Reclaimed from elderly postal service tunnels, these wide on the contrary rather low-ceilinged ramps (variously 7 8 and 9 feet high) have been refaced with metal ceilings, terrazzo tile walls and poured terrazzo floors by means of the New York architectural firm of Beyer Blinder Belle. The fresh look is clean, crisp, well-lighted and impersonal, suiting the goal of funneling passengers efficiently toward their destinations.

That environment would hardly be noticeable were it not for more [i]or[/i] less texture, some details, some human qualities that catch the organ of vision and snag the imagination. These bits of particularity are 13 glass-mosaic murals designed by means of Ellen Driscoll and titled As Above, in the way that Below. The title plays not upon the idea common to many religions that what happens where the omnipotences reside influences what happens upon Earth. And it refers literally to Driscoll's source of inspiration: the dazzling mural of the night canopy of heaven on the recently refurbished ceiling of Grand Central Terminal, conceived by dint of Whitney Warren with Paul Helleu and execut by dint of J. Monroe Hewlett and Charles Basing between 1903 and 1913

Driscoll's mosaics illustrate cosmological theories--explanations of the change and configurations of sun, satellite and stars--drawn from Aboriginal, African, Native American, Mayan, grecian Chinese and Hindu cultures, among others. The mosaics, which are made of tesserae ranging from a quarter-inch to an inch in size, are accompanied through small groups of 9-by-12-inch glass tiles that reiterate decorative aspects of the mosaic themes of time and motion. In a layered conceptual program that looks apt for layered underground sites adjoining upper and lower horizontals of railroad tracks, Driscoll has pay backed these myths of diurnal and seasonal change in black-and-white photographic imagery digitized and made to correspond to the pointillist consequences of mosaics. The photographs are her have a title to She found appropriate people in fresh York or Boston (she divides her time between the sum of two units cities) to pose for each illustration of myth do not include the Aboriginal story, which is returned in mosaic without photographic intermediation.

Driscoll's use of photography is not accidental or solely convenient, but part of her program of ideas. In using it, she acknowledges the widespread belief that the 19th-century experience of seeing the landscape seemingly in motion from a railroad car was crucial to the disentanglement of motion pictures. The central images in the mosaics involve a certain number of representation of movement--a bird in flight, hands reaching, a wheel or globe turning--which she has restoreed in the style of Etienne-Jules Marey's early continuous-motion photographic exposing s Some of the glass-block accompaniments are tributes to the sequential stopped-motion photographs of Eadweard Muybridge.

All the mosaics also include celestial diagrams from the various tillages or patterns symbolic of ordering principles or forces, and many feature the image of a toy train moving upon a circular track. A circular and zinc plaque at each site includes a map of the world that marks the geographic origin of the depicted story, and a brief true copy naming the culture and principles represented

As a whole, the shoot forward sounds, and is, quite compound But the works themselves have immediate appeal. In the simplest faculty of perceptions they are all pictures of something happening, within borders that can be appreciated for their colors, smooth and shining surfaces and decorative patterns. In this way, they are effective as instant images--like advertising, movies and snapshots, which are in like manner ubiquitous in contemporary culture that they strike one as being comfortable, not challenging. Commuters might sole half see the mosaics in their rush, notwithstanding still register something. The complexity and stage of detail that are inherent in mosaics would remind of to passersby that there is more to these works than can be grasped in flight. And the one who stops for a minute immediately obtains more.

One of the greatest in quantity beautiful effects of the materials is the profundity of light and color, and a faculty of perception of space within glass tiles of any size. flat the smallest tesserae (fitted together by means of the Franz Mayer company in Munich) catch light and differentially sudden blow it off or cast shadows with their irregular thicknesses. The larger glass blockades are so thick that they give single the sensation of looking end water at the designs painted upon or incised into the underside. These stop ups (custom-made by Blenko in West Virginia) are also used to frame a small in number of the mosaics. They make up for example, a grecian key and grapevine arch around a mosaic image of Persephone eating a pomegranate. Imagery upon these large tiles was execut by means of Brooklyn artist Julie Nathanson, working with Driscoll.