The glass man

New Yorkers may be enjoying their daily rail commute thanks to the stained-glass work of Baton Rouge artist Erskin Mitchell.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority commissioned the 56-year-old to create stained-glass windows from watercolor sketches by several New York artists for the above-ground commuter rail system.

Mitchell usually creates stained glass for churches; his work can be seen from Baton Rouge to Connecticut. He earned a master’s degree in stained glass from LSU in 1979 a few years before the university ended the program.

Mitchell traveled to New York a half dozen times to install the windows, and he was scheduled to set the final frames in January.

The stained glass community is a small one, and he landed the commission after a friend recommended him to the MTA. The commission paid handsomely compared to the average church commission.

Through its public art program, Arts for Transit, the MTA has been placing permanent artwork in subway and commuter rail stations across the city since the 1980s. It was launched as part of a larger revitalization initiative to make the daily commute more enjoyable for millions.

The primary artists chosen to design the panels for the stained-glass installations had no experience working with glass, which is why Mitchell and two other stained glass artists were brought in. “Glass is a unique medium,” he says. “In glass you can realize your ideas very quickly. It’s immediate and also very beautiful. The idea of manipulating light and color, it’s an exciting feeling.”

Mitchell’s glasswork is featured at the Crescent Street station in Brooklyn, where he transformed the work of Korean-born artist Jung Hyang Kim’s whimsical flowers into several faceted glass pieces appearing in the station’s platform wind screens. He titled it Wheel of Bloom-Soak Up the Sun.

His second installation was four three-paneled windows at the 231st Street station on the Upper West Side, and was installed in January. It’s a stained-glass version of artist Felipe Galindo’s interpretations of the neighborhood surrounding the station.

“The artists that I have worked with are so talented,” he says. “I am very meticulous about the pieces I have created because essentially I’m reproducing the artwork of another artist. That gets a little sticky and I try to make sure I have stayed true to the original vision.”

emitchellstainedglass.com