Long before it was dominated by A.I. start-ups, the advertising space in New York City’s subway was replete with lovable weirdness: a divorce hotline, personal-injury lawyers with a catchy jingle, the placid gaze of the dermatologist Dr. Zizmor.
Now, the quirky illustrations of Susan Bird are filling that space with a fresh measure of whimsy — and no product to sell except good vibes.
In the 72nd Street Q station, a pink-sailed clipper ship, filled with what appear to be brightly colored Easter eggs, floats atop a cartoon planet. At West Fourth Street, a glowing heart rises above a churning purple tide. At East 86th Street, a mage rides a sea horse in the sky.
The artist, whose real name is Sue Sarah Gilbert, said she had raised more than $1 million to display her art in the subway, with no financial motivations beyond exposure.
“It is literally about art as a gift, not a transaction,” Ms. Gilbert, 76, said in a phone interview from her home in Seattle. She had long dreamed of displaying her illustrations in New York’s subway system, and last year, she said, she found a group of wealthy investors to help bankroll the endeavor.
Ms. Gilbert, as it happens, is a great-granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller Sr., the business magnate and philanthropist. Raised on a private island in Connecticut, she has largely lived away from the spotlight, she said. But after a career in filmmaking, including a documentary that explores her family’s affluence, she became fascinated with digital art.
A self-described hobby artist whose illustrations had never reached such a wide audience, Ms. Gilbert said she had eight years’ worth of material to choose from. More than 4 million riders pass through the subway every weekday.
“Career-wise, it could be the swan song,” she said, “or it could be an open door to other opportunities.”
When she sought help making it happen, she encountered skepticism.
“We were like, ‘What’s the catch?’” said Jackie O’Keefe, the head of Possible, a public relations firm Ms. Gilbert hired to promote the art. “No one does this, right?”
But the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the subway, approved the campaign, called “Love in Transit NYC.” It consists of more than a dozen art pieces on billboards, digital displays and decals on turnstiles.
The images first appeared in February, with a love-themed motif at West 4th Street; different collections have appeared monthly and will be displayed through September in five subway stations and at one aboveground installation in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Manhattan. Some of the art will even be displayed on a Jumbotron in Times Square.
Ms. Gilbert is not a provocateur in the style of Banksy, and she is not making a political statement. Her work, filled with shining suns, wizards and dragons, is warm and incorporates inclusive sayings like “Be seen” and “I love all of you.”
The message is perhaps muddled by the price tag. Reserving all of a subway station’s walls and other surfaces, a package advertisers sometimes call “station domination,” can cost more than $250,000 per month, said Seneca Mudd, a managing partner at Brand Bravery, a marketing firm helping to coordinate Ms. Gilbert’s plan. He declined to give the total cost of the ad-space purchase, but said that it was over $1 million, including station rentals and marketing expenses.
Ms. Gilbert, who is contributing some of her own money to the campaign, would not name her investors, describing them as friends in the finance world who love art. But she said that once she pitched the project to them as a gift to the public, rather than a vehicle to sell something, it didn’t take much convincing.
“Let’s just say, it’s not killing their pockets,” she said.
Ms. Gilbert said she meant to offer passers-by some relief with the project.
“It was to give people a break from sales and pressure to buy, and sort of the flatness of ads all the time,” she said.
Courtney Richards, a senior manager at Outfront, the transit advertising partner for the M.T.A., confirmed that Ms. Gilbert’s art was filling space that might otherwise have gone to brands in the dating, beauty and tech fields, among others.
So far, Ms. Gilbert has remained largely anonymous., though most of the artwork bears the balloon-letter initials “S.B.”, for Susan Bird. QR codes placed near the art direct viewers to a website that encourages them to submit selfies with the art — but does not identify the artist.
Ms. Gilbert isn’t the most frequent subway rider — she visits New York once a year for family reunions — but said she felt drawn to the idea of bringing light and levity to a dark space.
“I have no idea why I was called to transit,” she said on a recent visit to the 72nd Street station, calling the idea “one of those thoughts that just drops in.”
Dressed in a powder-blue pantsuit and rainbow-sherbet scarf, she spent the morning watching the effects of her work on harried commuters.
Many whizzed by without looking. Some wondered aloud if the pieces might be part of the M.T.A.’s subway art program, or a sneaky ad campaign.
Others paused for a beat to take it in.
“It gives, like, a relaxing energy,” Alexis Chin, a nurse at a nearby hospital, said of a starry-skied piece in the station’s mezzanine.
“It’s better than, you know, looking at a blank wall,” she mused — or a broken arrival-time display or bad graffiti.
Ms. Gilbert beamed. She had said earlier that she would be content with spreading even a little joy.
The art is “not asking for anything,” she said. “You just walk by it.”
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
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