When I first moved to New York, I sold my car, a Toyota Corolla that was painted Golden Girls worthy taupe-gold. For the first time, I walked like never before and I used Google Maps like my life depended on it. My sense of direction is abysmal on a good day, let alone add uptown, downtown, local and express, basic questions such as Brooklyn or Queens,  and a maze of streets that felt like a pile of spaghetti left for me to untangle daily on my way home.

Additionally, this felt jarring, my quiet, comfortable beige cocoon was now a cacophony of chaos- mariachi bands, people doing backflips on the poles, little kids crying, dogs, young and old – all people with somewhere to be just like me. My comfort went from predictable to chaotic. 

After a couple of months and many weeks of traveling enough to exceed the fare cap, my sense of comfort is still in progress – the subway will likely never be as peaceful as a quiet car, but it’s also more entertaining & interesting. Would I ever have had a live three piece band of a Double Bass, a Guitar and an Accordion in my car? Probably not. 

My work below expresses some of it – there’s a sense of a tangled web, because it still can feel like that. I also wanted it to reflect the rigidity and an “if, then-ness” to the subway. If you’re at 14th on a local in Manhattan, you will almost inevitably end up at 23rd street stop. Some days I really the comfort of my car – my peace and quiet, before the world of chaos. But I’ve come to experience moments of comfort and sparks of joy. There’s some type of thrill when you see “1 Minute” and you actually make the train.  The adrenaline is unmatched. 

Some artists that inspired me to try this idea would be “Sara Berman’s Closet” By Maira and Alex Kalman and “Dear Data” by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec. 

In 2023, I had the opportunity to see an exhibit that changed the way I see data and information. The exhibit was called “Sara Berman’s Closet” By Maira and Alex Kalman.  It told a story in a way that I had never seen before – a story told through a very small amount of text and lots of white clothing items, a print or photo here and there and finally with a meticulously ordered closet. All real life data points from her journey through life. It wasn’t like any other exhibit I’ve seen up to this point. It inspired wonder. 

One other project that also had a similar, but more straightforwardly data driven focus was called “Dear Data” – which is in their own words, “ a year-long, analog data drawing project by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, two award-winning information designers living on different sides of the Atlantic.” 

Both planted a seed of an idea that maybe my mundane “life” data, may too have something interesting beyond the routine. It might inspire wonder – even if it’s just for my personal experience. That, I too, could marvel & maybe even celebrate the mundanities of my life. 

One large bias  present in the work above is that I don’t show all possible routes home. I only have included ones that I personally have taken home from work. I also only focused on my two job locations – one in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn & the other in the Upper West Side near Columbus Circle. My home is on E 26th.  I could have easily cast a wider net of options and included other ways to get home. I chose to exclude Uber and Lyft as those are a rare occasion for me to take them home.  

I chose to design a network, because getting on a train feels like a math “if then” statement. If I get on at Carroll Street on a “Manhattan Bound F Local Train”, then I will end up at Bergen Street. This felt like a network – my personal network of sorts. My question was more exploratory, “How could I show the interconnectedness of my paths home?” It’s a mandatory activity for me to weave my way home –  sometimes with the shortest amount of stops (F/M15)and other times lots of walking in-between to assure arrival to my desired destination (Fulton Street)). 

If I were to spend longer on this project, I would probably look at my previous “work to home” paths side-by-side when I lived in other states would be interesting. This also could be a local community, collaborative project where I have data from multiple commuters and look for intersections within their own data and the interconnectivity of it all.