By Amy Zimmer
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — For those who don't want to shell out $30 and wait on a seemingly endless line to get into the Armory Show, there's art to be had for free at the city's 77th Street subway station on the Upper East Side.
Organizers behind Armory Arts Week — which encompasses the several arts-related events that have sprung up around the Armory Show — are promoting the MTA's podcast explaining Robert Kushner's "4 Seasons Seasoned," a shimmering glass mosaic of plum blossoms, sunflowers, petunias and pansies, as one of the things to do while art hopping.
The four-minute audio guide taped last week about the 2004 work discusses the influences of Dutch flower paintings and Japanese screens on the artist, who was a founding member of the Pattern and Decoration Movement.
"Flower shops abound on the Upper East Side making available year round a dizzying array of exotic bouquets that rival the beauty found in nearby Central Park and the masterpieces on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art," MTA Arts For Transit Director Sandra Bloodworth says on the recording.
Flowers are a fitting subject at 77th Street, which serves straphangers heading to Central Park, Lenox Hill Hospital and the Whitney Museum of American Art, Bloodworth says, because "here the ideas of nature, culture and healing are often on the minds of riders."
The MTA's podcast for the Kushner piece was a new effort as part of the transit agency's participation in Armory Arts Week, a spokesman said.
