Three artists are creating banners to be displayed at central Phoenix light-rail stations for Reinvent PHX’s Wayfinding Project that will represent the unique community around each of those stations.
The project is a collection of three different banners that showcase the neighborhoods around the stations they’re located at. The stations were chosen by Artlink Phoenix and Valley Metro and the banners will be installed in late September.
Lucretia Torva is the artist for the McDowell Road and Central Avenue station, Jeff Jones is the artist for the Roosevelt Street and Central Avenue station and Robert Jackson is the artist for the 12th Street and Jefferson Street station.
With direction from a panel that also helped select them, the artists’ job will be to create a sense of place for people when they exit the light rail. The piece will be an artistic map of the area, so people can see what is around them.
“People often think when they hear ‘wayfinding’ that it means literal maps, and it can mean literal maps but it can also mean a way of marking a landscape or making an area that is unmapped easier to navigate,” Artlink Board Secretary Jill Bernstein said.
Each work will be printed on a mesh banner about 8 feet tall and 9 feet wide and will be attached to the station platforms. The works will also be reproduced as posters, which will be handed out to local businesses around the corresponding communities.
The artwork’s proportions make them close to squares, leaving the artists to find a realistic but abstract way to showcase the city and its businesses.
“I have to get all the stuff in there that’s important but still have it be somewhat recognizable,” Torva said.
Artlink handled the artist-selection process. Bernstein said 28 artists applied for the opportunity. Their portfolios were presented to the panels for each station, which were made up of community members involved in Reinvent PHX projects in their neighborhoods. Each group picked the artist they felt could best represent their community.
When selecting an artist for the Roosevelt Street and Central Avenue station’s banner, panel member and Evans Churchill Community Association board member Jennifer Boucek said, “We found a lot of common ground so we didn’t have that many choices facing us after we (the panel) had gone around and everybody had listed their top two.”
Boucek and the Roosevelt panel picked Jones, who said when he applied to the Wayfinding Project that he had hoped to be chosen for that station.
When Jones submitted his work, he sent five illustrations and five fine-art pieces. The illustrations included buildings that gave off a “historic feel.” He incorporated that style in his final design as well as the colors displayed in his fine-art pieces.
“I really was trying to give a nod to the art community and I think with things where I didn’t want to be too literal … I tried to just have fun with it,” Jones said.
Jones used to live in downtown Phoenix and is familiar with the area he is representing. The artists were not required to live in central Phoenix, and without geographical limits the panels were able to find an artist they felt would bring out the city’s personality.
Jackson is from Tuscon and said this is his first time really looking at the Eastlake-Garfield area.
“The call went out to a lot of people in a lot of different mediums,” Jackson said, “To even think about me down in Tuscon and entrust me to actually create a image that’s going to complete the vision that they have for this project, it’s huge.”
Contact the reporter at courtney.pedroza@asu.edu
