Expo/La Brea Station
LA Metro Lotería
Jose Lozano, artist
Estimated completion 2010
Lotería (translated as ‘lottery’ in English) is based on a card game with origins in Mexico. 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. “El Luggage” shows a smiling man surrounded by overstuffed luggage. “La Prisa” (the hurry) has a mother and child walking quickly across a plaza, the mother focused on reaching her destination, the child sidetracked by other things in the plaza. Set against a blue mosaic background, the ‘Spanglish’ lotería cards will appear to have fallen from the sky and landed on art panels throughout the platform.
These images are composites of all of our experiences of traveling on the train. In each scene, Metro riders recognize the colorful characters they see every day, bustling about throughout the city.
“LA Metro Lotería depicts scenes, people, objects and situations having to do with the Metro riding experience. The color and style of the cards are reminiscent of Mexican comic books from my youth and the Sunday comics. I want to create something visually interesting and poetic from what seems to be mundane and ordinary.”