MTA Arts & Design

116th Street

Robert Blackburn

In Everything There Is A Season, 2005

Glass mosaic on platform walls

Robert Blackburn's dynamic abstract patterns rendered in mosaic suggests the color and movement of the streets above that the artist shapes into beautiful artwork for the subway station. A master printmaker, Blackburn was a founding member of the Printmaking Workshop in Harlem. In 2001 MTA Arts for Transit commissioned Blackburn to create a work for the 116th Street subway station in Harlem. In failing health, he chose artist Mei-Tei-Sing Smith, a Bearden Fellow at the Printmaking Workshop, to assist him on what would prove to be his last major project. Once completed, his maquettes were enlarged and manufactured into ceramic and glass mosaics. Blackburn died in April 2003.