When Albert was four years old, he would look down from his fifth-floor tenement window and watch in awe as graffiti-covered trains raced from Queens to Manhattan. Every train that passed Albert was painted differently, prompting him to draw what he saw to memorialize the characters and colors that flashed before his eyes.

 

By the time Albert moved back to New York in the early ‘90s, the graffiti culture was at its peak. After hearing rumors that the trains he used to draw were stored in abandoned stations around the city, Albert knew he had to find them. Accompanied by three of his NYU friends and a couple of industrial lights they "borrowed" without consent from the movie department’s utility closet, Albert found a boarded-up entrance to an old Chambers Street subway station.

 

After shining the lights down the seemingly empty tunnel, Albert was once again captivated by the trains from his childhood. While this sculpture brings to life one of the abandoned trains he discovered as a graduate student, it also commemorates Albert’s first taste of art and inspiration as a little boy.