As the L train pulls into the Sutter Avenue station, its windows are unexpectedly filled with vibrantly colored, dreamlike images of sunflowers, butterflies, and rainbows. The six stained-glass windows, collectively called “The Habitat for the Yellow Bird,” by the New York-based Japanese artist Takayo Noda, seem out of place on the eastern end of the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, the streets of which are lined with identical, vinyl-sided row houses, low-rise projects, and the occasional bodega.

“I wanted to lift the neighborhood’s spirits by bringing in beautiful flowers,” Ms. Noda said of her work, commissioned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Arts for Transit program. Hundreds of boldly colored panels of glass make up each stained-glass window. The panels come together to form enormous flowers, dotted with bumblebees, stars, and dragonflies, drawing influence from the artist’s work illustrating the children’s books “The Song of the Flowers” (Penguin Group) and “Dear World” (Dial Books for Young Readers). The same yellow bird appears in each of the six windows, thematically connecting each of the scenes. “The bird represents my spirit,” Ms. Noda explained. “I like to always be there, too.”

Created in 1980 in conjunction with a general citywide subway rehabilitation program, Arts for Transit allows the MTA to renovate at least one of its stations each year, allotting 1% of the budget for the arts. The artwork is intended “to raise the quality of the ride,” the director of Arts for Transit, Sandra Bloodworth, said. For stations such as Sutter Avenue in Brownsville, where employment is low and crime rates are high (Brownsville’s local precinct, the 73rd, has the highest murder rate in Brooklyn so far this year), this is a welcome but ambitious endeavor.

Previous artists commissioned by the Arts for Transit program have incorporated the flavor of the neighborhood into their subway pieces. Faith Ringgold created mosaics at the 125th Street station on the 2/3 train called “Flying Home: Harlem Heroes and Heroines” (1996). At the Times Square station are Roy Lichtenstein’s futuristic, porcelain murals, which invoke speed and feelings of urgency. But Ms. Noda had never before set foot in Brownsville, nor could she find much information on the area at the neighborhood’s public library, so she took on the task of “lifting the neighborhood’s spirits by bringing in flowers.”For her participation in the Arts for Transit program, Ms. Noda was paid $20,000.

The installation was Ms. Noda’s first experience with stained glass. The artist typically works with collage or makes prints, but welcomed the prospect of a new medium. To begin the process, she painted a series of watercolors, which were then sent to Willet Hauser Architectural Glass in Minnesota, where the cartooning, or framework, for the glass panels was constructed. Ms. Noda then worked on the cartooning herself, refashioning the dark lines before sending them back for the glass to be inserted. The result is a patchwork of color on horizontal panels, each about 50 inches by 100 inches. The depictions of the subway train in one window, and urban buildings in another, are the only hints of the neighborhood in the images, and their presence gives the impression that the artist has created an unlikely fairyland in eastern Brownsville.