Residents who use the city’s public transit system will have an artful addition to their daily commutes, with the dedication of “In Between,” the Office of Arts & Culture’s latest piece of public art.
To celebrate this new work, the Office of Arts & Culture is holding a dedication 4 p.m., Friday, March 13, at the shelter location, at the southwest corner of 19th Avenue and Maryland.
“In Between” was a community creation, developed by coLAB studio, an Arizona artist team, through work with students at Orangewood Elementary School. The project brought together representatives from the city’s Police, Public Transit and Neighborhood Services departments, to ensure that what was created on the site not only was artistically engaging, but also was engineered to provide improved visibility for riders, better access for people with disabilities, and shade throughout different parts of the day.
“Projects like “In Between” are wonderful additions to the city’s neighborhoods, because they take something that could be unremarkable, such as a bus shelter, and transform it into a point of pride,” said Ed Lebow, director of the Office of Arts & Culture’s public art program. “It gives artists and the community the opportunity to work together to make a more beautiful and comfortable city.”
To develop concepts for the final sculptural elements, coLAB studio led workshops about the appreciation of beauty, asking members of the community to discuss what kinds of things they love, why they love them, and how those objects made them feel. One of the smallest of objects noted, a flower, can be held between your fingers. The largest noted were the stars in our galaxy, displaying almost everything the naked eye can see in the sky.
With this feedback, “In Between” was composed with two vertical shade panels. Both shade panels are made from the positive and negative elements of flower and galaxy images. The composite results are like puzzle pieces for the viewer, who can link them together through observation and imagination.
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 also In Between.
Poem, by Ron Pharea
The gift of attention is time;
the moment it takes.
This moment.
Here is the gist,
in the midst, in the you
before now;
in the difference.
