Garden Stops

1994 Cortelyou Road (Q) New York City Transit

“Garden Stops” brings neighborhood gardens and their creeping vines into the historic station architecture. Patsy Norvell's steel railings enclose the station entrances and stairwells leading down to the tracks, and each has a floral motif. Curving steel bars give way to columns topped by abstract flower designs. The railings' vertical bars are punctuated by decorative squares, reproduced from the stations' original fencing. In the waiting rooms large tri-panel bay windows that are etched with floral imagery overlook the tracks, mediating between the indoor and outdoor space. The artist describes the work as "an environment that surrounds you rather than something you stop to look at. As viewers pass through, the work's elements evoke the history of the stations, trigger people's own memories, and spark a kind of inner dialogue about space, nature, and change."