Here.

And it's about time. I mean, have you seen that monstrosity they've had hanging up down there all these years? You can tell that at the time of its installation in the eighties it was what "artists" were fobbing off as hip, rad, and cutting edge all balled into one giant wall-eating malignancy. It must have really wowed the locals with its mix of slag-heap scraps and left-over spray paint.

(The ceramic tiles made by school-kids are darling, though—and school-kid art, while cheap and plentiful, doesn't always have staying power—so I hope they have no plans to remove the tiles.)

The problem remains, however. There's certainly no guarantee that what replaces "Untitled (Vertical Scrap-metal Vomit With Site-Specific 'D')" will be less of an eyesore, especially since we live in an age of eyesores.

They're proposing nine 4' x 4' panels, with representatives from Tufts, the MBTA and the city of Somerville judging submissions from the community that "reflect"—in the words of their "call to artists"—the community.

Yee. Ikes.

Public art is usually a recipe for disaster, with mixed results at very best, and this combination of judges, while representative of the heady mix that makes Somerville the caldron of culture-spooge it is, seems exceptionally aesthetically challenged all around.  (They're financially challenged as well—they're offering artists a whopping $100 honorarium!)

Davis Square and its environs are already particularly rich in public "art." An embarrassment of riches, you might even say. There are those disarmingly life-like concrete statues with their grotesque bronze masks scattered all about. There's the cow on a flagpole and the like in Seven Hills "Park."

A simple fountain in the Square probably would have sufficed, but someone decided that the whole area had to be quite literally peopled with public art.

My hope is that brainy art students will come out of the woodwork to finally transform the Davis Square T stop into the premiere postmodern iteration of the noumena phenomena of multiple overlapping and successive approximations of a daily commute narrative that it is, offering experiential art as an antidote to the modernist project of the station itself, and as a mock-ironic meditation on the pain and problems of normality and conformity in the square above it.

Mirrors would, of course, be ideal for the project. Immediately compelling, undeniably interactive, and actually functional, nine 4' x 4' mirrors could be placed on the walls above the tracks at platform level and variously distorted to reflect T riders back upon themselves, to sometimes startlingly accurate, sometimes pleasingly deceptive effect.

Riders themselves would be both subject and objet d'art, choosing amongst nine postmodern iterations, constructing selves of dysmorphic reflections (some of which might involve holographic death-heads, subliminal phalluses, or jungle scenes embedded in the mirror surface—cameras and monitors could be substituted for mirrors as well, making possible more diverse, evolving and elaborate scenarios).

Riders would find themselves participating in a constantly shifting—dare I say diastrophic?—daily narrative as both signifier and signified. Patterns of boarding and deboarding trains might well be altered, as some riders forsake their usual car in order to wait on the platform in front of the slimming mirror, while others of a more whimsical bent might seek out the dwarfing mirror for its Hobbitizing effects.

Frames of various styles and mini-ambient spaces framed by speaker "pods" would be added to complete the modernist/postmodernist dialectic on forms/antiforms. Blowdryer stations could also be added on the platform for last-minute primping and teasing. 

We could call it "re(flect)ions".

I can't take total credit for this idea, of course. What kind of a postmodernist would I be if I could? I was reading about an installation artist who would be perfect for this project, in fact, and whose current project, while floundering, inspired my proposal above.  Her stalled installation could easily be modified, moved underground, and turned into an MBTA meta-station.

Here's what her thing consists of:

The mirrors would be mounted close to shore, reflecting the water, sky, visitors, and decaying military structures, a symbolic way of neutralizing them. The artist would row out each morning, washing and wiping them down as the sun rose over the water.

If she moved it to Davis Square, she could just take the T to her installation. It's a hell of a lot quicker than rowing out to a Harbor Island. And if you could get her to do the cleaning in the bargain as some kind of post-modern statement, you'd kill two birds with one stone, and save a ton of money on maintenance!

Or you could just have a bunch of kids scribble on some posterboard and call it a day.