In the mosaic artwork "Gratitudes off Grand" at the upgraded Grand Street ​ station in Brooklyn, Glendalys Medina reflects on their COVID-19 pandemic practice of taking 15-minute walks to get outside and cultivate gratitude. For the Grand Street station project, Medina would walk in each cardinal direction originating at station, return to their studio, and record the colors associated with memories cultivated during their strolls. Medina then used these colors to create abstract studies that build on their existing practice inspired by Taíno culture, Hip-hop and Latinx culture and music, and the way humans create sense out of the world, such as the way brains organize patterns.

The two mosaic panels at the Grand Street station appear on each platform mezzanine. On the Brooklyn-bound side, Medina reflects on the various communities who have comprised East Williamsburg and Bushwick over time. The large color fields represent the original Lenape inhabitants and Pan-African, Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican, and Dominican immigrants. On the Manhattan-bound side, more intimate color studies were derived from the artist’s experience of the neighborhood across seasons. A nearby church, birds in the springtime, the Moore Street Market, and the collar of a passing dog provided inspiration for these compositions of interlocking forms that call to mind schematic design drawings. Fabricated by Miotto Mosaic Art Studios, the two panels feature overlapping shapes that allow the eye to complete forms that are disrupted, inviting viewers to look a little longer and contemplate gratitude.

Glendalys Medina is an Afro-Caribbean Nuyorican conceptual interdisciplinary visual artist who was born in Puerto Rico and raised in the Bronx. Medina received an MFA from Hunter College and has presented artwork at such notable venues as Artists Space, The Bronx Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, and The Studio Museum in Harlem among others. Medina was a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, a Jerome Hill Foundation Fellowship, an Ace Hotel New York City Artist Residency, a SIP fellowship at EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, the Rome Prize in Visual Arts, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Art, a BACK IN FIVE MINUTES artist residency at El Museo Del Barrio, residencies at Yaddo, the Bronx Museum Artist in the Marketplace residency. Medina is currently a professor at SVA’s MFA Art Practice program.