MTA Arts & Design

Bronx Park East

Candida Alvarez

B is for Birds in the Bronx, 2006

Faceted glass in platform windscreens

B is for Birds in the Bronx, a series of faceted glass windscreen panels, was inspired by the birds that populate the Bronx. While they may often not be noticed, birds are present in our urban environment, filling the air with song and the sky with flight. The artist makes the birds prominent through scale and composition, placing them in the foreground but almost treating them as negative space. As the artist explains, "I wanted to subvert them by making them white, and make them invisible, large and regal. The birds in their emptiness give attention to their transparency and how they hold a space for the trees, the bushes, the snow, the branches, the wind, the sky, and the leaves to exist, like a still-life painting...where the space outside of the object, really creates the form of the object... ."