Children’s Cathedral

1996 Utica Avenue (A, C) New York City Transit

Dominating one of Jimmy James Greene's huge mosaic panels in the Utica Avenue station is a plump yellow angel on rollerblades. Perhaps more than any image in the ten panels that compose “Children's Cathedral,” this demonstrates the artist's intentions: to reflect the desires, dreams and memories of the community's children in their own drawings. "At first," he says, "I talked with the kids about how they play, learn, pray, and celebrate. Then they drew." What emerged were images of the neighborhood: shops, a woman pushing a baby carriage, a teacher in class, plants, flowers, and, most of all, children in action: singing in choir, jumping rope, reading, riding bikes. The artist took hundreds of the children's images and arranged them into eight groupings, adding color to the pencil drawings. "They were the soloists," he says, "I was the orchestra leader."