La Esperanza
“The music plays. The helping hand reaches out. The birds fly by. The flowers grow. The work of sharing joy continues. The community draws together. Our hearts beat for one another.”
Author: Metro Art
L.A. Sonata
By weaving cultural identifiers with elements that denote the passage of time, artworks create a sense of shared place and historical significance that honors the heritage of the local, the immigrant and the tourist alike.
L.A. Flow
Project Description The layered cyan, magenta and yellow transparencies in Matthew Brandt’s photographic series L.A. Flow (2016) were processed through a waterfall system that pumps Los Angeles tap water over the surface of each monochrome print. It took weeks for the water to erode the pathways that form the images. Alluding to the necessity of interdependence, the artworks are a reminder that the city’s municipal water system, like Metro, connects us all through an infinitely shifting network of relations that are essential to everyday life. These artworks are part of the Metro Art Photo Lightbox Series and will be displayed in select stations between 2017 and 2020. Artist Statement “Recent events throughout the United States have shown us the fragility of municipal water systems and the power of civic stewardship. Though the populace of Los Angeles is economically and culturally diverse, we all drink from the same tap. Our daily decisions impact those around us.” About the Artist MATTHEW BRANDT (b. 1982, Los Angeles) earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of …
La Sombra del Arroyo
Hand-painted and glazed ceramic tile on the undersurfaces of the bridges provide the illusion of lacy tree branches overhead, while cast relief tiles feature a variety of native birds and animals which might once have inhabited this spot.
LA Metro Lotería
Jose Lozano’s LA Metro Lotería plays with the station name “La Brea,” retaining the Spanish language prefixes “La,” “El,” or “Los,” and substituting “Brea” with passenger interactions commonly encountered while riding Metro.
LA Dialogs
Margaret Nielsen’s mural presents a chronicle of Los Angeles history, primarily through images of antique postcards which take us to a different time and place
LA Day, LA Night
Project Description The daytime images were taken directly into the sun, and depict highways as meandering rivers. The nighttime shots move from representation to abstraction becoming a reversed celestial sky. Artist Statement “I couldn’t resist the concept of placing work made about LA itself a couple of years ago in the entrances to its underground circulatory system. This series is comprised of three key daytime aerial images of Los Angeles and four night aerial shots alternating through the seven photo lightbox sequence.” About the Artist MICHAEL LIGHT is a San Francisco-based photographer and bookmaker focused on contemporary American culture’s relationship to the environment. He has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, and his work has been collected by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Getty Research Library, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The New York Public Library, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He is the recipient of the Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Photography. Display year: 2010 – 2013 Locations: Vermont/Beverly StationNo longer on display
LA: City of Angels
This large painting on aluminum panels is located above the escalators at the west entrance to the Metro B Line (Red) subway station.
Know Thy Self
In order to beautify what is often a community eyesore for the duration of the construction phase, Metro Art commissioned veteran mural artist Charles Freeman to design and paint an original mural on the large scale construction fences at the corner of 1st and Lorena Streets.
Kinetic Flow
Project Description George Legrady’s work consists of a series of vibrantly colored porcelain enamel steel panels, 14’ x 22’ 6” at the angled concrete wall above the staircase and escalator unit at the LA City College entrance of the station. The algorithmically generated abstract rendition uses statistical transit ridership data to create visual patterns. Artist Statement “The design concept for the image has been to engage the kinetic experience of the downward movement on both escalator and staircase and escalator, one smooth, the other sequential”. About the Artist GEORGE LEGRADY received a Masters of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute. Recent interactive installations have been exhibited at Ars Electronica, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. He has been awarded Creative Capital Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts grants. He currently holds a joint faculty appointment in the Media Arts & Technology graduate program and in the Department of Art of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Public Art commissions include the Seattle Public Library and Metro …
Kinetic Energy
Artist Ries Niemi has created 550 linear feet of hand-wrought fencing for this station, influenced by the historical Art Deco buildings of Pasadena, the Craftsman Style detail of architects Greene & Greene, and the beauty of machines and trains from the Industrial Revolution.
Kid
Kid, an image of a young girl born and raised in North Long Beach, is one of many paintings and drawings produced over a three-year span.
Kaleidoscope Dreams
The overall theme and design of the station was established by artist James Doolin and architect Tanzmann Associates, while artist Anne Marie Karlsen designed and produced the nearly 4,000 square feet of hand-painted tile murals.
Keep Going
Keep Going depicts poet and urban planner, who, as a local Afro-Latina, represents the cultural intersection of many South LA communities.
Journeys: LA Communities Through the Eyes of Artists
Featuring the original artworks by twelve artists who created posters for the Through The Eyes of Artists series, Each artwork on display in this passageway focuses on a particular neighborhood or city in Los Angeles County to capture the look and feel of each place from a personal perspective.
Journey to California
Project Description Daniel Marlos designed terrazzo paving areas and porcelain enamel steel panels for station platforms. There is a long history of quilting in this country. Many designs are centuries old and have descriptive names that correspond to important events. ‘Road to California’, ‘Railroad Crossing’, ‘Wandering Paths’, and ‘Wagon Wheel’ are just a few that actually deal with transportation. The selected pattern, Journey to California, is a pattern that references both California and travel. Artist Statement “Several years ago, I took my interest in structural film and photography, and expanded my media to include the handmade quilt. Duration, repetition, representations of time and space, mathematics (especially geometry) and the interstices between shots and images create a strong visual style that translates to the quilting medium.” About the Artist DANIEL MARLOS, born in Youngstown, Ohio, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Youngstown State University and a Master of Fine Arts from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He is an installation artist, whose primary media has been photography and film. He has recently expanded his …
Jose Carrillo, El Taquero
Jose Carrillo, El Taquero portrays the artist’s father, a taco vendor, in the uniform he wears during his daily Metro commute.
Intolerable Beauty
Project Description Beautiful photo images depict piles of the not so beautiful remains of mass consumption, serving as visual reminders of the roles we all play in America’s unsustainable culture. Artist Statement “I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity.” About the Artist CHRIS JORDAN has exhibited his work internationally and is the recipient of the Greenleaf Award and a Lannan Foundation Production Grant. Based in San Francisco, Jordan’s focus on sustainability and waste not only have afforded him exhibition opportunities but also speaking engagements at Green symposiums and conferences. Display year: 2010 – 2013 Locations: 7th St/Metro Center Station No longer on display
Into the Light
In Statom’s work, Into the Light, five ordinary objects—house, ladder, leaf, cone and diamond—become extraordinary when suspended in the Westlake/MacArthur Park Station’s skylight area.
Intervals and Intensities
Project Description LaBelle’s photographs depict some of LA’s most iconic apartment hotels located in Hollywood, Koreatown and MacArthur Park neighborhoods. These mystifying images draw awareness to important aspects of LA’s past that may have been forgotten. The long exposures give the neon a smoldering luminosity, while the palm trees, illuminated with a hand held spotlight serve as a silent witness to the buildings and their history. Artist Statement “My aim in making these images was to call attention to places in the city that are often overlooked and to illuminate aspects of the city’s history which have been forgotten. Literally casting a light on the past, my hope is that these images will renew the enchantment of the city for those of us who have come to take its beauty and strangeness for granted.” About the Artist CHARLES LABELLE obtained his Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has exhibited in galleries throughout the United States and Europe. He was a recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Center Study Fellowship in …
Infinite Landscape: Los Ángeles Para Siempre
Inspired by the geometric details of the art deco architecture along the Wilshire corridor and in greater Los Angeles, Eamon Ore-Giron’s artwork concept for the glass entrance pavilion and escalator landing walls of this station references the past while looking toward the rapidly changing future of Los Angeles’s streetscape.
In the Shadow of the Zanja Madre
Project Description Taking as a point of departure Los Angeles’ role as a center of film and drama, the artist presents Union Station and its immediate surroundings as ready for a close up. Artist Statement “Full of history and drama, I’ve aimed to treat the iconic Union Station, as well as the people and places of its surrounding neighborhood, with equal respect-from a solid stone arch in the station to an ephemeral cluster of cotton candy.” About the Artist KEVIN McCOLLISTER has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. His photographs have appeared in publications that include Digital Capture At Night and East of West L.A. Selected Photographs by Kevin McCollister. Display year: 2014 – 2015 Locations: No longer on display
In the Living Rock
Artist Samm Kunce’s artwork explores ideas gathered from science and literature. The celebration of inherent beauty of natural materials is a recurrent theme in her work. Kunce’s tile mural at the 1st and Hill St. entrance to the Civic Center station runs the length of the curved planter bed wall.
In the Ether
This selection of photographs, titled In the Ether (2015) documents the flora from two local sites: Crown Coach Yard, a 40-acre industrial brownfield in downtown Los Angeles, and the canyons around the artist’s home in Glassell Park using a century-old field camera and an early photographic process called wet plate.
In Our Hands
Pulling from her experiences, she creates stories completely arranged in a palette of bold color and subtle shades.