Metro Features Gardena on New Poster by Local Artist

Monday August 23, 2010

A new poster celebrating Gardena – one of many destinations customers can travel to via Metro – will be on display on Metro buses and rail cars from August 23, 2010 through October 24, 2010.

A new poster celebrating Gardena will be on display on Metro Rail cars.

Commissioned by Metro Creative Services, the new poster is by local artist Jonathan Anderson. A thriving garden beneath power lines blooms around a central figure, who cultivates the land, calling to mind the many farms and nurseries that contributed to the development and naming of the city.

“In my painting, said Anderson, “a woman is depicted working in this in-between space, this corridor of earth under the power lines that runs between the urban structures on either side. Vegetation seems to simultaneously grow from the ground and from her own form: the plants are not only growing around her, the plants are growing because of her, because of her efforts to sustain and cultivate this space.”

Jonathan Anderson is Assistant Professor of Art at Biola University. His work has been exhibited at venues that include the University Art Gallery at CSU Dominguez Hills, Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Long Beach Arts Gallery, Gallery de Soto, Cal National Bank, 930 Art Gallery (Louisville, KY) and the City of Brea Art Gallery. Jonathan Anderson received his Master of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting from California State University, Long Beach.

A new poster celebrating Gardena will be on display on Metro Buses.

In the tradition of celebrating transportation through colorful travel destination posters, Metro commissions a diverse range of Los Angeles artists to create original artworks for the Metro Neighborhoods poster series. The purpose of the series is to express the distinctive character of neighborhoods and destinations served by Metro. The posters are displayed throughout the Metro system, including on trains and buses, in stations and various other locations. The limited edition posters are available for purchase at the Metro Store, metro.net/metrostore.

The Gardena poster is the 21^st in a series of posters commissioned by Metro Creative Services. Posters in the series have garnered a Print Magazine Regional Design Annual Excellence Award, Tranny Merit Award, “Fresh” Illustrations Award from Illustrations Magazine Annual, Los Angeles Society of Illustrators Silver Medal, and a Society of Environmental Graphic Design Award.

Metro seeks to change public perception about transit and to transform the customer’s experience through excellence in art and design. Central to this objective, Metro Creative Services includes the agency’s in-house design studio, which creates Metro’s brand communications, and the agency’s art and design excellence programs, which commission wide-ranging projects by visual artists and promote overall design quality of customer environments.

From intelligently designed, user-friendly customer information, engaging and effective advertising and a newly designed fleet of buses and trains to large scale site-specific artworks by world-class artists and live poetry readings, Metro employs art and design to create a sense of place, engage transit riders, and improve quality of life throughout Los Angeles County.

For more information about Metro’s art programs and it’s free docent guided tours, visit metro.net/art of call 213/922-4ART.