Design Team Artists:
Alice Adams, Bronx, New York
In collaboration with the landscape architects on the project team, Adams impacted the corridor and station landscape and hardscape based on her response to the area's indigenous trees and plant life. Her contributions appear in concrete medallions featuring three leaf designs for low station walls, a unique sidewalk stamp, and sidewalk scoring patterns. She designed two large sculptural benches, one including a planter, for the Archdale and Arrowood stations. Special landscapes will appear at specific stations: "Celtic Calendar" at Tyvola Station, "Evergreen Encyclopedia" at Arrowood Station, and "Orchard" at Woodlawn Station.
Marek Ranis, Charlotte, North Carolina
Working closely with project architects and engineers, Ranis focused on the enhancement of corridor bridges and retaining walls. Four of Ranis’ eight specified standard formliners altered the surfaces of more than 10,000 running feet of high and low retaining walls and bridge piers. A Carolina earth color and a sky gray, drawn from nature, are the artist’s choices for the majority of the bridges and walls in the six station areas from Woodlawn to I-485. For the Crump Road bridge at Sharon Road West, two liners mimic tree bark and the texture of tree leaves complemented by a brown and light green paint scheme covering over 25,000 square feet. Ranis also impacted the structural aesthetic of over 40 bridge piers, the large columns supporting elevated portions of the light rail track. The artist’s rectangular pier cap design adds shape and interest to the capitals; the color scheme features Carolina earth and sky gray.
Commissioned Artists:
Nancy Blum, New York, New York
Blum designed two art basins for drinking fountains based on a spiraling pattern and the state flower, the dogwood. Each of the 15 stations will feature two 18" diameter cast bronze basins.
Shaun Cassidy, Rock Hill, South Carolina
Cassidy designed fencing for ten stations, ceiling art for 16 light rail vehicles, and platform finishes for the 7th Street Station. He fabricated 40 metal leaves and welded them into 40 sections of station fencing. Each leaf reflects a species of tree found in the station area and the leaf's veins correspond to neighborhood street maps. For the light rail vehicle, the ceiling art and seating fabric incorporate a leaf motif. Cassidy also introduces his leaf motif into the column mosaic cladding, windscreens, etching, and paving pattern for the 7th Street Station.
Richard C. Elliott, Ellensburg, Washington
Elliot uses acrylic reflectors of red, yellow, white, blue and green to transform the Archdale Station elevator tower into a "Tower of Light". Reflectors will be arranged in abstract patterns on translucent panels mounted between the elevator glass. The artist intends for users to experience a "reflective moment" as they approach the elevator and a "stained glass" phenomena while inside the elevator.
Hoss Haley, Asheville, North Carolina
Smooth river stones provided the original inspiration for five sculptural benches that will be fabricated by the artist and will appear at five different stations. With the resulting shape, the artist introduces an organic form to complement the symmetry and geometric lines of the rail station design. The benches will be polished and refined to create a "terrazzo-like" exterior on the concrete's surface.
Leticia Huerta, Helotes, Texas
Drawing on colorful textile patterns and community references, Leticia Huerta created platform paving patterns, mosaic tile designs to clad canopy columns, and etching designs for the glass windscreens at 11 stations from I-485 north to Carson station. The platform paving, column cladding, and windscreen elements will be coordinated to give each station a unique and coherent visual identity.
Andrew Leicester, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Leicester continues his design concept for the Charlotte Bobcats Arena, inspired by the Carolina textile industry, to enliven the CTC/Arena Station with pattern and color. The bobbin design on the Arena's exterior will reappear in the form of colored-brick columns supporting the Trade Street bridge. A textile weave paving pattern will visually connect the station platform and the Charlotte Transit Center.
Dennis Oppenheim, New York, New York
Oppenheim's Reconstructed Dwelling is intended to activate the plaza area below the station platform where people could create a market place, congregate, or play. His Reconstructed Dwelling includes recognizable house elements -- an inverted pyramid, a wheel, and a rectangular corridor – all constructed of common house-building materials. An illustrated floor plan of a typical home will be painted on the concrete where the sculpture is sited near the stairs where riders ascend and descend the station platform.
Jody Pinto, New York, New York
Pinto transforms the 3rd Street Station with color and light by replacing traditional passenger shelters with twenty fiberglass canopies. The canopies function as shelters and as lighting elements, emanating color as florescent light radiates through the fiberglass structures, illuminating the 3rd Street bridge platform. The visual effects are experienced by riders, uptown pedestrians, and vehicular traffic. The station also features fiberglass seating and a bold paving pattern to complement the art canopies.
Thomas Sayre, Raleigh, North Carolina
Six large sculptures cast from Carolina earth and concrete stand in the Scaleybark Station landscape. The 18' sculptures were inspired by harrow disks, the agricultural tool used for centuries behind a plow to cultivate farmland and still used today. Titled "Furrow," the name refers to the cultivation trench or "Vee" left in farmland by a plow or harrow and pays tribute to Scaleybark's agricultural past.
Thomas Thoune, Charlotte, North Carolina
Thoune collected china, ceramics, glass, and additional materials from the community and combined with his own handmade ceramics to produce a freize of mosaic "cogs" for a 360-foot wall along Camden Road. Like gears in machinery, individual cogs serve as design elements paying homage to the area's industrial history. The art cogs present vignettes of life, both past and present, surrounding the station's neighborhood and business community.
Yuriko Yamaguchi, Vienna, Virginia
Small bronze sculptures, fabricated by the artist and installed at the Bland Street Station, will create a narrative work of art, using forms that symbolize the growth and mystery of our lives. By recasting familiar objects in unfamiliar shapes, Yamaguchi creates unique vessels through which the viewer interprets the own meaning and creates a personal story.
