(The following article by Jennifer Moroz was posted on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on January 6.)
PHILADELPHIA — The goal was to make riding the train more aesthetically pleasing.
But Alyssa McCrindle finds the wildly colored steel shapes bolted to the walls at the PATCO station in Collingswood just plain bewildering.
“I think they might be little sea creatures or amoeba or something,” the 18-year-old Collingswood resident said last week before catching the train to Philadelphia. “It’s kind of there for no apparent reason. I don’t get it.”
Installed in September, the Collingswood display is a product of the growing “arts in transit” movement. With the help of a committee of art types, PATCO selected six artists with area ties and paid them a total of $476,000 to beautify 10 stations with creations that in some way reflect the region.
In Collingswood, at least, the effort – part of a $100 million project to rehabilitate PATCO stations – doesn’t seem to be getting rave reviews. There, the leader of a regional rail-passenger advocacy group has called the $46,400 display an eyesore. And riders last week regarded the metallic renderings of larvae, worms and algae with more confusion than admiration.
That is, if they noticed them at all.
The collection of underwater organisms, by former Philadelphian Stacy Levy, is also found at the Westmont station. Officially, it’s called Waterlines.
But Don Nigro, president of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers, has another word for it: “Weak.”
Nigro, who said residents had complained to him about it, featured the artwork in his organization’s December newsletter with the (sarcastically scripted) headline: “Welcome to Historic Collingswood.”
“It’s neither artistically interesting or pleasing, and it’s not in character with the town at all,” said Nigro, himself a Collingswood resident.
Looking at the art other towns got, Nigro can’t help but think that his community got the short end of the paintbrush.
“They did this to Collingswood and Westmont, but they didn’t do it to Haddonfield,” Nigro said.
Such words weigh heavy on an artist’s heart.
“As a public artist, it kind of makes me sad that people want the same thing over and over again,” Levy said from her home in Centre County, Pa. “They don’t want to be adventurous.”
To Nigro, the art at Haddonfield station is simply more tasteful. There, Gloucester City artists Debra Sachs and Marilyn Keating designed Haddonfield Lotto, three panels of large painted ceramic tiles that depict different aspects of the community.
As he passed through that station last week, Brian Grossman, 19, said the arts in the stations “didn’t make one bit of difference” to him.
“I just care that the train gets me where I’m going,” said Grossman, of Haddon Township.
Having said that, he eyed Haddonfield Lotto and conceded: “This one’s actually pretty good. It actually has something to do with the town.”
In Collingswood, meanwhile, folks have been left wondering about the logic behind the Trachelomonas protist, Navicula diatom, and caddis fly larva hanging on the station walls.
“They look like fungus,” said Kristi Erdman of Gloucester City, who regularly passes through the Collingswood station but was noticing the art for the first time last week. “What’s the correlation?”
There is one. It’s just tough to see, especially for commuters running to catch trains. Levy is known for bringing to life hidden aspects of the natural world. In Collingswood, the organisms she created represent the ones in the nearby Cooper River and Newton Creek. She even hired a local biologist to sample the waterways, which also are represented in the display, to ensure scientific accuracy.
“They’re beautiful, these creatures you never think of,” Levy said.
PATCO officials acknowledged they could do a better job explaining the creatures to confused commuters, and Levy said she was working on a guide to do just that.
But neither made any apologies for the artwork.
“Art is definitely a very subjective thing. Unfortunately, you can’t please everyone,” said My Linh Nguyen, a PATCO spokeswoman. “I personally think it’s pretty cool.”
Cool or not, it’s lost on people like Mike Dungee. No matter what art PATCO puts up, he’ll scoot right by it.
“I’m in construction,” Dungee, 48, of Cherry Hill, said as he passed through the Collingswood station. “We don’t worry about these things.”