Detail of Paraje—Spanish for a resting place between two destinations—a 10ft h x 10ft w cast stainless steel sculpture containing imagery inspired by the nearby Gardena Willows Wetlands. Preserve.
A new sculpture by Alison Saar is now installed at Artesia Transit Center (currently in transition to being renamed Harbor Gateway Transit Center). Entitled Paraje — Spanish for a resting place between two destinations — the cast stainless steel sculpture contains imagery inspired by the nearby Gardena Willows Wetlands Preserve.
Saar’s sculpture was commissioned by Metro’s art program as part of a broad series of Metro improvements to the station’s physical environment. Other improvements include enhanced station lighting, upgraded wayfinding signage and new CCTVs and digital message signs.
Scroll below for photos documenting the installation of the sculpture. Click here for a previous Source post about the artwork.
The 12-inch high stainless steel base of the sculpture shown just before it is installed. The base contains a quote by Japanese poet Saigo.
Workers set the sculpture into its base
The artist, Alison Saar, after her sculpture has been installed.
Detail of Paraje. The sculpture’s west face depicts a willow tree, while on the east face a willow spirit, shown here, emerges mysteriously from the tree. The folds of the willow spirit’s dress become the roots of the tree and the spirit’s upheld arms become branches.
Detail of Paraje, depicting the willow marshes the artist discovered in the area during her research for the project.
@Kimberly
Exactly, isn’t LA already known as the concrete jungle. I have never been to Europe but someone paid for the character and ambiance their cities project. Even Las Vegas has a certain feel. LA is strip malls and concrete.
In Boston, we have newspaper stands, we sell bottled drinks, we have several shops within our stations and they all do just fine.
I think a lot of Angelenos who pretend to know stuff about mass transit could spend their times outside of LA once in a while to see how mass transit is done elsewhere.
As Kimberly mentioned, if they spent the extra time to Google stuff like how we name our stations by locality than intersections or how we build our stations with both art and retail space in mind, or even how other cities around the world uses technology and even different fare systems, they will have their eyes opened how little they know about how mass transit works elsewhere and how far behind LA is to catch up with the rest of the world.
I doubt majority of the people who say things like “nobody names stations after localities” or “stations should be just stations, nothing else” or “no one uses distance fares because it’s too complicated” have even bothered to get an US Passport to travel outside of this country. You can’t assume things you don’t know about unless you actually see them first hand.
This is a nice artwork. But I have a general criticism of the “Arts in Transit” programs.
In the old days, the builders of mass transit *integrated the artwork into the station designs*, as with the fabulous mosaics in the IRT stations in New York, or the Leslie Green London Underground station designs, or any of several famous architectural designs used for train stations (“Richardson Romanesque”, etc.)
Lately, the “arts for transit” have mostly been standalone artworks, separate from and not integrated with the stations. This kind of misses the point. The City Beautiful movement called for each station to *be* an artwork, and that is what Arts in Transit should do.
We still need art for the Metro Silver Line at the remaining 7 stations..