But her intention for the piece, which is modeled on the bacteria that live inside human intestines, is specific to its location in a transportation hub that will serve the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

"I started to think about Buffalo as a larger body, like a corporeal entity where the streets and the subway lines and the tunnels and the bridges – all of the thoroughfares – are part of the circulatory system of the City of Buffalo," she said.

It's no mistake that the snaking structures, she said, "bear a resemblance to the structure of DNA. These fundamental parts of our bodies, these fundamental expressions, are translated into the colors that we have here."

The 25 vibrant colors were achieved by powder-coating 242 individual pieces of stippled stainless steel, a material trademarked by the Buffalo company Rigidized Metals. The pieces, which weigh only about 200 pounds each owing to the lightweight material, are held together by 15,500 nuts, bolts and washers.

The pieces are fastened to the structural beams of the building and snake through perfectly cut holes in the station's ceiling and floor tiles, giving visitors the sense that the strands run through the entire building – and possibly through the earth below and infinitely up into space.