Digital rendering of Nordhoff Station, featuring 27-foot long mosaic ellipses embedded in the concrete platforms and 20-foot porcelain enamel art panels.

The Orange Line Extension to Chatsworth is fast approaching and so is new art!

Here’s a peek at the work of Anne Marie Karlsen, who designed two mosaic paving designs and two art panels for Nordhoff Station. The photographs below focus on the mosaic element.

Anne Marie was inspired by the surrounding residential and natural landscape, including the landmark Stoney Point in Chatsworth. She approached the station platform as an outdoor living room, creating wallpaper-like porcelain enamel steel art panels alongside the platform seating areas, and glass and stone mosaic paving patterns designed to read like cozy ellipse-shaped area rugs. The title, Strati, refers to the geologic stratification and formation of the rocks in the northwest San Fernando Valley. (Here’s a link to more information about Anne Marie.)

Detail of strati.

The work is currently in the fabrication phase, which means that teams of artisans are translating Anne Marie’s original paving designs from works on paper to the durable material of glass and stone mosaic.

Fabricators at Perdomo place bits of glass into the paving designs.

The fabrication materials were selected both for their tactile qualities and sumptuous color, and for their ability to withstand the heat and cold.

First, sheets of custom colored glass were created at Perdomo, the artwork fabricator, to match the artist’s color selection.

Next, the sheets were split by hand into thousands of pieces, which are currently being assembled one tiny piece at a time by a team of dozens of artisans.

Colored glass is separated into tiny mosaic pieces.One of the almost-finished 27 foot long paving artworks.

Other Orange Line Extension stories on the Source:
Art for the Orange Line: Artists discuss station designs

Art for the Orange Line: Owensmouth/Canoga Park by Margaret Lazzari