Last week I attended a lecture given by the noted design writer & critic, Steven Heller. One unexpectedly memorable item I took from the evening was Heller’s comment about how lovely the twin cities are, and if only we were to install a subway, he would move here.

Recently in Print magazine there was an article about Andrea Dezsö’s process of installing some fantastic mosaic artwork in a Bronx subway station. You can see it here, along with a lot of other New York transit art. It really looks to me like New Yorkers experience a lot more public art on a daily basis, than I do here in St. Paul. But then again, several times daily I pass the Green Chair Project installation.

The twin towns do have light rail, and it’s just one line. It’s got some interesting art, as well. Here’s some more. We also have a lot of buses, but the unfortunate thing about buses, versus trains, is that their stations don’t tend to require a lot of mural-sized space. Shelters are more expendable.

We’ll get there. Or I’ll move to Portland.

Some of the expectedly memorable items from Heller’s retrospective of his work at the School of Visual Arts:

• Amy Wang’s Ametrica project
• Lara McCormick’s Stop and Start Over project
• Bobby C. Martin Jr.’s identity system for the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem (scroll down a bit on this page for pix)