Monday, September 24, 2012

Civic Center Metro Mosaics: People Portraits

On the Metro Red and Purple lines, on the mezzanine level of the Civic Center Station, are 52 smalti mosaics of people--people playing sports, making music and art, or just looking good. They line four walls, and each Faith Ringgold is the artist. She's internationally known and lauded, and her blog shows photos of all the different mosiacs. The art of Faith Ringgold is in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim and MOMA in New York. She's also a poet, writer, quilter, and performance artist, and her artwork covers many media (is that the right term?): sculpture and painting, as well as mosaics.

Her statement about the art--as printed on the Metro website--is: "The content will reflect the creative energy of the Civic Center area.  Thus it will be color studies of people engaged in creative activities such as: art making, music, dance, performance, fashion modeling, etc."

As always with Metro line mosaics, Mosaika fabricated the work and posted pictures of the artist and work-in-progress (as of 2009; it was installed in 2010) on their blog--like the one at right.

On the bottom picture--which shows how the work is displayed--both pictures are from the Performing Line. Is the guy on the left a mime, maybe?

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