Located in Grand Central Terminal North, the mosaic, bronze, and glass reliefs in Ellen Driscoll' As Above, So Below pay homage to the heritage of the Main Concourse by taking the viewer on a round-the-world journey to the night sky above five different continents. The work's tableaus recount myths of the continents and their civilizations, the heavens, and the underworld. Looked at one by one, these scenes bring to life ancient tales of the birth of the world, the sun's daily transit, the stars in their courses, and the fates and fortunes of mortals and deities. Viewed as a whole, As Above, So Below suggests how the stories we tell about the heavens mirror the way we live on earth.
While these stories span continents, cultures, and different historical epochs, the work's 13 major panels and associated wall reliefs also reflect our time. Look closely at any of the figures, and you'll see a face like the faces of the travelers around you. Indeed, the people in these mosaics are ordinary Americans from many different backgrounds--but through manipulated digital and photographic technology, they take on the attributes of mythical deities and figures. Similarly, the materials--glass tiles, patinated bronze, and glass mosaic---impart the feeling of age, but have been arranged in a way that is thoroughly contemporary.
As Above, So Below summons the everlasting and the ephemeral, illuminates the transcendent and the everyday, and reminds us of our spiritual and worldly past as we hurry to and from our trains.
Ellen Driscoll is a professor of sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design. Her work includes installations such as The Loophole of Retreat (Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris, 1991) and Passionate Attitudes (Threadwaxing Space, New York, 1995); public art projects such as Mum's the Work (a public banner project in collaboration with the Aphasia Support Group at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston,1998), and Meanderlink (an airborne banner flying over Frederick Law Olmsted's Emerald Necklace in Boston, 2000); and Ahab's Wife, a theater production done as part of the 1998 International Puppet Festival at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York. Ms. Driscoll has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Anonymous Was a Woman, and Harvard University's Bunting Institute. Her work is included in major private and public collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Commissioned by
MTA Arts For Transit and Metro-North Railroad.
Artwork fabricated by; Franz Mayer of Munich, Julie Nathanson, Architectural
Glass, and the Paul King Foundry.
Photography by Mike Kamber.
Website by Anna Norberg.