Project Description

Devon Tsuno is creating an artwork for the entrance of the station that speaks to agricultural history in Southern California and the role of Japanese American gardeners. At the street level paintings of azaleas fabricated in glass will honor his grandfather, who was a gardener in Beverly Hills for 30 years. Descending into the station riders experience abstracted layered images of flowers, berries, fruits and Japanese vegetables like shiseido peppers from the Japanese-owned green houses that supplied the gardens throughout the region including Beverly Hills for many decades. Woven into the design will be a depiction of groundwater first discovered in the area around the station in the early 1900s. The artwork references a history between labor, land and precious resources that are essential but often hidden in plain sight.

Artist Statement

“By honoring the beauty and history of the neighborhood’s labor, land and water… The entire station will become a metaphor for the way water and labor support the life of the community above.”

About the Artist

DEVON TSUNO (b. 1980, Los Angeles) is a fourth generation Angeleno whose art projects that unfold as spray paint and acrylic paintings, community projects, and public installations grapple with Japanese American history, generational and collective trauma, migration and displacement, water and labor politics, and the natural and built environment of Los Angeles. Tsuno earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach in 2002 and a Master of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate University in 2005. He is an assistant professor of art at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH); founder of CSUDH’s PRAXIS art engagement program; and member of J-TOWN Action と Solidarity, a mutual aid and anti-gentrification group. Tsuno’s work has been exhibited internationally and he has had solo exhibitions at Oxy Arts (2014) and Residency Art Gallery (2020), both in Los Angeles and was a featured artist with MOCA’s Sunday Studio (2020). His fellowships include the 2014 California Community Foundation (CCF) Fellowship for Visual Artists and the 2017 Santa Fe Art Institute Water Rights Residency.