Artist Lisa Corinne Davis on NYC Subway Murals and Abstract Painting

Subway Art Installation at Hunter College Station

• 🎨 Lisa Corinne Davis, an artist and professor at Hunter College, has created three new artworks for the MTA Arts & Design program at the 68th Street-Lexington Avenue station.
• 📍 The station, a complex mix of diverse individuals, inspired her mosaic installations titled "Liminal Location" and "Tempestuous Terrain."
• 🖼️ Davis's work generally focuses on locations and spaces, aiming to depict navigational systems with abstract elements suggesting movement and resting places.
• 🚇 The process involved a rigorous proposal to arts professionals, with guidelines to reflect the neighborhood and the station's diverse demographic.

Artistic Concepts: Liminality and Grids

• 🔑 "Liminal Location" explores the concept of being transitional, between here and there, reflecting the constant movement of commuters.
• 🇩🇪 The mosaic for the curved wall was translated by a fifth-generation glass mosaicist in Munich, Germany, from Davis's digital file.
• 🗺️ Davis hopes commuters encounter elements that imply maps and self-locating, experiencing the work as both maximal and minimal, aerial or grounded.
• 🧱 "Tempestuous Terrain" utilizes a grid-like setting, which Davis sees as a factual, stable language that she then disrupts to make it more personal, subjective, and human.

Abstract Art and Personal Expression

• 💡 Abstract art, for Davis, is about the felt experience rather than narration, working from the inside out.
• 🎭 Her work draws from her specific life experiences as a light-skinned African-American woman who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood and attended a Quaker school.
• 📐 The shapes in her work are conversant, moving between hard-edge geometry and more lyrical, biomorphic forms until an indeterminate point is reached.
• 🌟 Davis's titles often combine pragmatic and subjective elements, sometimes using alliteration, to invite viewers to bring their own interpretations.

Artistic Journey and Practice

• 🖼️ Davis's large-scale oil paintings (around 80x60 inches) allow for greater perceived scale differences and are a result of her working best at that size.
• 🎨 She views abstraction as a way to explore the felt and visceral, stemming from her interest in identity, race, and culture.
• 🖌️ Describing herself as a "slow painter," Davis emphasizes the deliberate decision-making process, especially with oil paints which are slow to dry and allow for layering.
• 🌟 Her "big break" was showing at the June Kelly Gallery, where the gallerist initially liked the work but couldn't sell it until Davis's practice evolved.
• 👩‍🏫 Teaching at Hunter College exposes her to students who are increasingly tired of technology and seeking ways to move beyond it.