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Associate Professor Sandy Litchfield recently unveiled Forestation Syncopation, a series glass installations commissioned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority/Arts & Design and located at New Hyde Park Station on the Long Island Railroad.

With an emphasis on color and light, each shelter depicts the rhythmic flows and fleeting interruptions of the surrounding landscape as it might be seen from the window seat of a train. Intervals of evergreens and oaks mingle with streetlights and utility wires; clusters of houses and buildings intersperse with forest islands and leafy backyard. The title refers not only to a forested station, but also to the variety of unexpected rhythms found in a musical score.

Syncopation is a musical term that involves a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected, and often considered a vital element in holding a musical track together. Forestation is the establishment of forest growth on areas that either had it previously or lacked it naturally. Together, these two concepts describe a continuous landscape that binds and connects the urban town-scape to the tree-lined streets and parks along the railroad.