Jackie Chang was exiting the Metropolitan Avenue-Lorimer Street subway station near her home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, several years ago when she heard a man in front of her grumble, “It looks like a museum in here,” with an expletive.
While New York’s subway stations are not widely known for their aesthetics, that station is notable for its expansive word and image mosaics that prompt passers-by to contemplate themes such as “History/Your Story,” “Faith and Fate,” “Truth and Trust,” and “Mankind.”
Ms. Chang, a 60-year-old public artist, educator and community activist who had been commissioned to design the mosaics, found the man’s comment amusing.
“I didn’t want my work to be seen primarily by a pretty elitist audience,” she said.
In the late 1990s, she made the initial mosaics that have adorned the station’s walls for over two decades, and she recently designed new pieces that went up as part of a renovation.
Revisiting the series for the new project gave her a chance to reflect on her place in the community. While Williamsburg’s gentrification over the last few decades has been extensively discussed, Ms. Chang’s subway artwork has been a steady presence for passengers as the neighborhood has changed around them. She said she wanted to “add onto it in a way that was fresh but also aligned completely with the works that exist.”
Ms. Chang lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg with her husband, Joe Matunis, who is also an artist.
CHANGING NEIGHBORHOOD I get up on Sundays a little before 8. Either Joe or I would actually go out and pick up The New York Times. We used to go to the bodega just across the street, but that’s closed down. So now we have to go to the Rite Aid next to the Whole Foods. And I think this is also very illustrative of what’s happened to our neighborhood. One of us would start coffee, and we would have coffee on the deck. We have a very nice deck.
THE OLD COMMUNITY Around 9 I would go to the gym, the Metropolitan pool around the corner from us. It’s really important for me to be part of the Met pool because it’s the only place I can still see, like, the old neighborhood. So you see the Hasidic women who would actually be exercising in their skirts and doing their swimming during women’s swim, and all the old Puerto Rican and Dominican women, older women. If the disinfectant bottle is missing, somebody is going to be there to offer you some kind of homemade concoction to disinfect your machine.
However, during the summer, that’s not open on Sundays, so I’ve been going and doing my run. I start my run-walk at the Marsha P. Johnson State Park. I would finish at Domino Park. I remember when this stretch of Kent Avenue was waste transfer stations and there were, like, these wild dogs living in abandoned buildings, and you would see their heads poking out.
MOSAICS AND BREAKFAST Lately I’ve been really into Taiwanese breakfast — yes, it’s a thing. I like going to Ho Foods. That’s in the East Village. My husband and I, we would meet friends or our daughter, Maya, for brunch. If it’s raining, I would take the train, and actually would catch the train at my stop, Metropolitan-Lorimer, where I made that work. Once the work is installed, I don’t think it belongs to me in any way anymore. I just feel really lucky that I get to use that station and see my work.
So a classic Taiwanese breakfast would be soy milk. It could be sweet or savory. And then you dip this kind of doughnut thing — it’s called youtiao. And then I like having this kind of egg omelet. It’s a really thin, kind of chewy, omelet, and it’s called dan bing. A really classic Taiwanese breakfast I think people don’t really know about is a rice ball, or sometimes it’s a roll. It’s called fan tuan. I usually would have brunch with my friends — and most of them are not Asian, certainly not Taiwanese. So for me, it’s also a way for me to kind of share who I am. Brunch is usually around 11.
STUDIO TIME I’m home usually around 2. If there’s something I want to finish up or think about, I would be in the studio. The studio is on the first floor of my building. It’s basically underneath my home. I was working on the flip sign. It’s an electric sign that flips into three images. It is playing with words that sound the same but have different meanings, combined with images. So words like bread and bred, so B-R-E-A-D and B-R-E-D, or rite and right.
UPDATING THE CURRICULUM I teach two classes at Pratt. Next semester I will be teaching art, culture and community development. It’s not about acquiring skills to make art, but it’s acquiring skills, knowledge as to why you would make art, like how to apply it — not just as a decorative item to be sold on the market. I work on it up in my den. My studio is only studio work. I try not to get distracted.
PRACTICE The other thing I make sure I do during Sundays is play my violin. Maybe around 5, I’ll play for half an hour. I really love Baroque music. I like playing Bach, Brahms. I play a little Vivaldi, even though I think he’s a little bit too floral for me. I know he’s famous for his “Four Seasons,” but he gets too fancy.
ALFRESCO Then I will start dinner. I’m actually a pretty good cook. During the summer, I like not to light up my industrial stove, because it gets really hot. So I stick to making tuna poke bowls, pasta with pesto, tabbouleh, hummus, baba ghanouj. But I like eating outdoors on my deck, so alfresco dining is what I do. And often I will have somebody in the neighborhood, like one of my neighbors, come. When I do my cooking — this is something that kind of annoys my family a little bit — I listen to Pandora, French cooking music. My husband really makes fun of me.
BRITISH NARRATIVES After dinner, so like around 9, I always watch “Masterpiece Theatre” on PBS. I really like “Professor T,” which is a British remake of a Danish series. I’m always really curious about how the British portray people of color on their series. There’s a lot of escapism in British TV for me.
WYOMING I get into bed around midnight. I like reading short stories because often I can read it in one sitting. Right now I’m reading a collection of short stories called “Close Range” by Annie Proulx. It’s a collection of short stories about Wyoming. This collection of short stories is actually pretty fabulous. It makes you not want to live in Wyoming, by the way. And then I always do the crossword puzzle, usually The New Yorker. Then I go to bed.
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