The Arizona artist team coLAB studio worked with students at Orangewood Elementary School, and consulted with the Phoenix Police, Transit and Neighborhood Services Departments to design a spacious transit shelter that provides improved visibility, ADA access and shade. This shelter, along with added trees, is the final phase of City public art improvements planned as part of the Light Rail corridor along 19th Avenue. The first phase, completed in 2011, included a 1,400-foot gabion wall, between Maryland Avenue and Tuckey Lane, and additional wall and landscaping in the Royal Palm neighborhood.
The shelter's design evolved from artist-led community workshops where students described and drew objects they loved. The inspirations ranged from flowers small enough in your fingers to the vast galaxies of stars seen in the night sky.
The transit shelter features two vertical shade panels. Each is made from the swirling positive and negative patterns seen in flower petals and galaxies. The results are like puzzle pieces for viewers to put together in their minds.
Above the two art panels is a poem referencing “you," the viewer. Juxtaposing and connecting things of beauty in art and utility, small and large scales, near and far relationships, we display that 'you' are In Between.
The percent-for-the-art funds for this project come from the Street Transportation and Wastewater Capital Improvement Programs.
