On the roof's surfaces, a pictograph of an American Indian with a canoe, symbolizing indigenous peoples' use of the harbor, is projected in circles of green light.
Blue floodlights mounted under the broad eaves project down onto the pavement, intensifying the luminescence of the night sky. The building's windows emit a yellow glow softened by shades that dissipate the light, evoking the Victorian gas fixtures that once lighted the interior.
Ms. Thacher was based in Manhattan and known for her multimedia installations, films, videos and public projects. Her work has been shown in the United States and Europe and is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum, the Berlin Arsenal and the French Film Archives.
"Illuminated Station" was commissioned in 1995 by the transportation authority under the Creative Stations program, now defunct, which provided temporary works of art. From initial proposal to fruition, the Greenport project was 10 years in the making.
The piece was originally designed for the Long Island Rail Road station house in the Village of East Hampton to celebrate the building's 100th anniversary in 1995. For that location, the work would have had a generic arrowhead motif projected on each of the station's two gables, in addition to the blue outlines and floodlights.
Ms. Thacher did extensive research in the Long Island Collection of the East Hampton Library, which has photographs of the station house in its early days and information on the 17th-century white settlers' interaction with the Indian population. In spite of what she said was considerable support for the project, however, it was not accepted for installation in East Hampton.
"Lots of people got behind having it there," she said, "but some people really didn't want art in the station."
Thinking about an alternative location, Greenport naturally came to mind, she said. Its former station house is architecturally similar to East Hampton's, and Greenport is known as a sympathetic site for contemporary sculpture. For several years, Greenport played host to "Footfalls," an annual exhibition of site-specific sculpture in various spots around the village in which Ms. Thacher participated.
With the transportation authority's blessing, she approached village officials and the board of the museum that now occupies the building. Not only were they receptive, but they also endorsed the authority's proposal to modify the installation to make it permanent.
Another change was the substitution of the man-and-canoe pictograph for the arrowhead projection. Ms. Thacher found the new motif on a plaster cast of an Indian artifact discovered in Orient by a local family. It fit perfectly with her longstanding interest in American Indian art, she said, as well as the building's location by the water and the museum's maritime focus.
The cast of the artifact is on display at the Suffolk County Historical Society in Riverhead.
"Illuminated Station" is part of the Greenport waterfront revitalization that includes a public park, a carousel and the museum itself, which was founded in 1990.
Ms. Thacher's piece has been illuminated from dusk to midnight since June 4. It is visible to strollers along the shoreline and diners in Greenport's harborside restaurants, as well as to ferry riders.
And right next door, Long Island Rail Road passengers who board or get off each evening at the stark modern platform that now serves as the Greenport terminus can admire Ms. Thacher's homage to a bygone era of rail travel and the port's historical association with the Island's indigenous people.
NOTES:
Illuminated Station, 2005, 35 x 105 x 25 feet, LED and other light fixtures, scrim, metal stencils, color gels, window scrim shades, projector. M.T.A. Art-in-Transit commission at the Greenport Long Island Railroad Station.
In a three-dimensional setting, a two-dimensional illusion is created of a storybook illustration from an earlier time. The station seems to float on the "page" of the dark night around it.
