Lisa Dinhofer's "Losing My Marbles" was commissioned at a dark time in New York City history. (Keri Blakinger/New York Daily News)
The subway system might be enough to make you lose your marbles — but at least one artist understands.
The Times Square-42nd Street subway stop is a cavernous complex home to an array of station art, including Lisa Dinhofer's brilliant and colorful mosaics titled "Losing My Marbles."
Near the A,C,E lines, the collection of mosaics sit — quite appropriately — right at the end of the long hallway that houses the tongue-in-cheek "Commuter's Lament," a dark and cryptic Burma-Shave ad-style poem spanning the underground walkway between Seventh and Eighth Avenue.
While the "Commuter's Lament" is somewhere between funny and cynical, "Losing My Marbles" is entirely playful.
"The title is playful and fun and it's really not deeper than that — it's fun," MTA Arts & Design Director Sandra Bloodworth said. Though it wasn't completed and installed till 2003, the MTA commissioned the piece at a dark time when cheery station art felt particularly necessary.
THE STORY BEHIND THE TIMES SQUARE SUBWAY POEM
The colorful marble mosaic is near the Port Authority end of the Times Square subway stop. (Keri Blakinger/New York Daily News)
"It was right after 9/11 and I thought, 'It would be nice to bring joy into New York again,'" Dinhofer told the Daily News.
For the Brooklyn-born painter, the decision to depict marbles was an obvious one.
"I was working on a still-life of all glass and I decided I needed something else and I play with marbles so I threw them into the still life," she said. Then, when she got the MTA commission, she decided to throw marbles into her work there as well.
Dinhofer isn't just a still-life painter and marble-player, though; she sees herself as somewhat an illusionist as well.
"I was trained as a realist but what changed for me is that my objects exist and I set them up but my space is imaginary so I make you believe it like a magician — that's why I call myself an illusionist.
Dinhofer said that she likes to play with marbles and has found that art fans all around the world do, too. (Keri Blakinger/New York Daily News)
"It's also hyper-realism so it's something that you can't photograph. You can't photograph the set up and get what I put on the picture plane," she said.
For this work, Dinhofer started with a scale drawing and then had the pieces made by a mosaic artist in Germany.
Although some of the MTA's art collection is created by renowned public artists, Dinhofer said that public art is not her main focus. Even without a sizable public art background, the 63-year-old SoHo resident was able to snag the commission by winning out in the competitive selection process typically used to pick the art installations that accompany MTA station renovation projects.
"We were drawn to this proposal because we wanted it to be playful and colorful," Bloodworth said.
"You're right there at Times Square and the whole thing with the art across that corridor and in the other stations is just reflecting the cacophony of things that happen above."
Copyright © 2022, New York Daily News
Copyright © 2022, New York Daily News