How a Subway Mosaic Artist Spends Her Sundays

Jackie Chang was exiting the Metropolitan Avenue-Lorimer Street subway station near her home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, several years ago when she heard a man in front of her grumble, “It looks like a museum in here,” with an expletive.

While New York’s subway stations are not widely known for their aesthetics, that station is notable for its expansive word and image mosaics that prompt passers-by to contemplate themes such as “History/Your Story,” “Faith and Fate,” “Truth and Trust,” and “Mankind.”

Ms. Chang, a 60-year-old public artist, educator and community activist who had been commissioned to design the mosaics, found the man’s comment amusing.

“I didn’t want my work to be seen primarily by a pretty elitist audience,” she said.

In the late 1990s, she made the initial mosaics that have adorned the station’s walls for over two decades, and she recently designed new pieces that went up as part of a renovation.

Revisiting the series for the new project gave her a chance to reflect on her place in the community. While Williamsburg’s gentrification over the last few decades has been extensively discussed, Ms. Chang’s subway artwork has been a steady presence for passengers as the neighborhood has changed around them. She said she wanted to “add onto it in a way that was fresh but also aligned completely with the works that exist.”

Ms. Chang lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg with her husband, Joe Matunis, who is also an artist.