LONG ISLAND, N.Y.- The SculptureCenter will celebrate Ellen Harvey’s mosaic Look Up Not Down at the Queens Plaza subway station and the publication of Ellen Harvey: Mirror by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Monday June 19, 2006, 6 – 8pm at SculptureCenter, 44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City, NY.

Look Up Not Down is an approximately 2,000 square foot glass mosaic for the Queens Plaza Station that combats subway claustrophobia and disorientation by providing subway users with a 360 degree view of what they would see if they were in an imaginary building located directly above the station. The views are perfectly oriented so they can be used to navigate the station in relation to the world above except that they are based on photographs taken in the winter of 2001 and so already reflect a city that no longer exists. The sun marks the former location of the World Trade Center, one of the ultimate navigational landmarks of the city. The Queens Plaza subway station is located in Long Island City three blocks north of SculptureCenter on the corner of Jackson Avenue and Queens Boulevard. The mosaic was commissioned by Metropolitan Transit Authority Arts for Transit and was fabricated and installed by Kolorines – Mosaicos Venecianos de Mexico S.A. de C.V. at the end of 2005.

Ellen Harvey: Mirror is published by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in conjunction with her solo exhibition Mirror, a installation of hand-engraved rear-illuminated mirrors and videos that created a drawing in light of the central stair hall of the Academy as a ruin, complete with smashing mirrors and burning buildings, from October 15, 2005 – January 8, 2006. The catalog contains texts by Alex Baker, contemporary curator of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and Shamim Momin, associate curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art as well as retrospective documentation of other works by Ellen Harvey. Both Mirror and the catalog are funded by the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, a program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, and administered by the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

Both Ellen Harvey: Mirror and Ellen Harvey: The New York Beautification Project, published by Gregory R. Miller & Co. in 2005, are distributed by D.A.P. and will be available for purchase at the party.