Project Description

Michele Martínez designed terrazzo paving areas and porcelain enamel steel panels for station platforms. The pre-Columbian glyph is a flat stamp from Apatzingan, not far from the world’s largest butterfly sanctuary, in the state of Michoacán, Mexico. The map is the West Coast of North America, indicating the Monarch’s western migratory path, and the monarch larvae on double spiral is a reference to genetic encoding that spurs every third generation of butterflies to complete a migration from Canada to central Mexico.

Artist Statement

“These designs are my tribute to the Sepulveda Wildlife Reserve and the efforts of people who strive to protect natural habitats.”

About the Artist

MICHELE MARTÍNEZ has Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara in Studio Art and Hispanic Civilization and a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. With a background in critical pedagogy, she has taught language, art and cultural studies at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, Fairfax High School, Fullerton College and Pacific Oaks College. Michele has provided arts instruction to youth through grants from the California Arts Council, the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, the University of California, Los Angeles and the Orange County Office of Education. For her work, she hears and collects stories and invokes imagination to render works in paper, fabric and paint.