Wyandanch and Pinelawn

American Season

Mary Judge
View of a station shelter.
"American Season" (2018) © Mary Judge, LIRR Wyandanch Station. Photo: Seong Kwon

About the project

"American Season" is a meditation on seasonal changes, living in harmony with nature and each other, and societal changes that come with the passing of time. Judge’s work is installed in three parts at both the Wyandanch and Pinelawn stations, which can be seen from multiple perspectives. At Wyandanch, that includes from the approaching train, walking through the Wyandanch station house along the overpass, and from the platform below. At Pinelawn, that includes from the approaching train and walking through the shelter shed.  

Rich colors radiate and envelop viewers passing through "American Season" in the Wyandanch station overpass bridge and "American Season" in the Pinelawn station platform shelters. The bold lines recall the flare of approaching train headlights, or the speeding up and slowing down of a train. The symbolic expansion and contraction is punctuated with stylized flower beacons that are rendered in the style of a homemade sewing sampler. The recurring motif expresses the marriage of place, nature, and the technology of train travel.   

Judge’s patterns and palette draw from variety of sources including Native American residents of Long Island’s past, textiles from global communities of the present, and American Craftsman design style of the station house. 

Judge’s watercolor drawings were translated into hand-painted and printed laminated glass panels for windows in the overpass by Mayer of Munich.

Judge designed the terrazzo floor in the station house. The artwork reflects the station’s unique geometric architectural features. Concentric circles and lines intersect the design, suggesting the way travelers move through space, anchored by the flower beacon seen in each artwork location, and connecting the three distinct parts.   

About the artist

Mary Judge is an artist known for her complex and reductive works on paper, sculpture in cast concrete, and paintings in tempera acrylic. She was raised in rural New Jersey and received her BFA from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, and her MFA from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine and Tyler School of Art, graduating from the Rome campus. Her works are included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Fogg Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Cassino, Italy.