Rail Art

Walls and Bridges

Carolyn Braaksma
2018
Over 4 miles of visible walls include relief designs inspired by a combination of textile patterns and indigenous Carolina insectivores and orchids, resulting in 17 different hand rendered designs. For the 4 project bridges, Braaksma added her bright green Leaf Railings, and large Pitcher Plant Piers support two project bridges. More info can be found in the video here.

Stair Towers 

Susan Brenner
2018
Brenner’s art is fused into the glass of the stair towers leading to the JW Clay Blvd. and University City Blvd. station platforms. Her art evokes cellular and tree forms tied to the circulatory nature of light rail moving people.

Bike Parking / Northeast Corridor

Darren Goins
2018 
The Geometric Abstract Bicycle (on the horizon) Rack The Sun Guided the Road Bike Shelter
Nine stations in the Northeast Corridor have signature bike parking retrofitted with art by Goins along with bike racks designed by him that mimic the form of a bike. The art at each end of the bike canopies gives an illusion of a road approaching the distant horizon.

7th Street

Shaun Cassidy, Ginkgo
2007
Echoing the station platform trees, ginkgo leaves interrupt the fencing between the train tracks, appear on the windscreens and in mosaic on the canopy columns. The veins of the fence leaves are neighborhood street maps; the dot indicates the station location. Nine other stations feature different leaves in the art fencing. Cassidy also designed the light rail vehicle ceiling graphics and seating fabric, further referencing Charlotte’s tree canopy.

Windscreens, Mosaic Columns, Platform Pavers 

Leticia Huerta
2007
Huerta designed platform paving patterns, mosaic tile column cladding, and etched windscreens for 11 stations from Carson Boulevard to I-485. Each station features a unique theme derived from local history, architecture, landscape, industry, and demography. Her Gold Nuggets for Carson Boulevard were inspired by 18th century gold mining. The Bland Street rose motif comes from Dilworth architecture. Arrowood features Indian feathers and snakes inspired by Catawba pottery. East/West, Tyvola, and Archdale stations recognize Charlotte’s textile history. 

Benches

Hoss Haley, River Rock Bench
2007
Smooth river stones inspired Haley’s sculptural benches. The hand-polished steel and concrete art introduces an organic form juxtaposed with the standard seating at 5 stations.

Signal House & Traction Power Substation

Leigh Brinkley
2012/2017
Designed by artist Leigh Brinkley, the bright green pattern on the signal house and sculptural letters above the roof line are meant to enliven the exterior and Southend. The substation appearance is mitigated through a trompe l’œil effect mimicking the exterior of the Atherton Mill.

Hardscapes & Landscapes

Alice Adams
2007
Adams was one of two lead artists involved early in the design phase of the LYNX Blue Line. She impacted the corridor’s landscape and hardscape thematically based on her response to Charlotte’s indigenous trees and plant life. Her contributions throughout the line include 47 cheekwall reliefs, a unique sidewalk paving stamp, two sculptural benches, concrete scoring patterns, and a few specialty landscapes. 

Walls & Bridges 

Marek Ranis
2007
Lead artist Marek Ranis chose standard form liners and color to add interest, texture and depth to the corridor bridges and walls. A Carolina earth color and sky gray drawn from nature enhance most of the walls and bridges, but the artist deviates at one of six stations by using a tree bark texture and brown color beside a pale green and leafy texture to enhance the retaining wall. 

Drinking Fountains

Nancy Blum, Dogwood
2007
Blum designed two art basins to replace 24 standard drinking fountains basins along the south corridor. Each 18” diameter cast bronze basin features the dogwood blossom, North Carolina’s state flower. The spiral design mimics the Fibonacci pattern seen in nature.

UNC Charlotte Main

Mikyoung Kim, The Nexus Project
2018
Kim’s art is in the spirit of university learning and flux. Her 100’ of undulating, perforated stainless steel sculptural seating is surrounded by motion activated colored lighting, altering the landscaped plaza where people await the trains. Her art glass and metal columns on the platform expand her time concept within the station environment. 

JW Clay Blvd.

Jackie Chang, (T)HERE
2018
Chang’s art was influenced by the station and boulevard’s namesake, James W. Clay, a geographer, traveler, and urban planner. Blending text and images in her art, she incorporates the words “HERE” and “THERE”. For the artist, HERE signifies one’s current location and THERE indicates the horizon. Chang creates this distinction by inlaying the word HERE into the platform and depicting in the glass windscreen THERE - which contains “HERE” - above the horizon lines of three recognizable North Carolina landscapes: the Piedmont, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Atlantic coastline. 

McCullough

Shaun Cassidy, Ebb and Flow
2018
Cassidy expands upon his leaf motif found in the southern corridor art with natural elements. Etched windscreens, canopy columns, two Leaf Shadow Benches and flowing stainless steel art fencing were designed by the artist. Cassidy also designed bus shelter windscreen glass.

University City Blvd.

Jackie Chang, (W)HERE
2018
Chang blends text and foliage imagery in her station art by 
incorporating the words “HERE” and “WHERE”. HERE, embed in the clay-colored concrete underfoot, signifies one’s current location; and WHERE, found at eye-level in the art glass windscreens, is an abstract term, belonging both to the past and to the future. Chang said in an interview, “Charlotte is looking to the future, but it is also taking the past with it.” 

Tom Hunter

Tom Stanley, A Place Called Home
2018
Stanley’s art is a result of his interaction with Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School and Hidden Valley Elementary students and their concepts of ‘‘home.’’ The artist utilized the students’ drawings and words in his windscreen glass and canopy columns along with his own aesthetic interpretations. His art fencing and two art benches reference pyramidal house tops. More info can be found in the video here.

Old Concord Road

Chandra Cox, Nature’s Sanctuary
2018
The woodland bird habitat neighboring the station at Eastway Park influenced Cox’s station art, including a 250’ Birds & Cattail Fence set in a berm of ornamental grasses and flowers. Native critters become large in the etched windscreen glass and tiny in the canopy columns.

Sugar Creek

Chandra Cox, Locomotion
2018
Influenced by freight train activity parallel to the light rail station, Cox references heavy rail through her kinetic finials atop the canopies and locomotive imagery in her windscreen glass. In the canopy metal column cladding she uses the historic spellings of Sugar Creek. Her 18’ high Orb Lantern sculpture is inspired by a train switch and sited between the station platform and parking garage.

36th Street

Ruth Ava Lyons & Paul Sires, Welcome to Nodaland
2018
Red is the artists chosen signature color for the station’s metal work, including the canopy steel, light poles, and fencing to signify the eclectic NoDA neighborhood, which they were instrumental in contributing to. Their art recognizes the area’s growth with industrial and organic imagery in the canopy windscreen glass, metal column cladding, and smalti glass mosaics set in the wall approaching the platform. Sires’ carved granite bench is sited at street level. 

25th Street

Sharon Dowell, A City of Optimists
2018
Dowell’s painting style is utilized in the canopy windscreen glass art and column cladding art. Ten mosaics and color added to standard benches and railing captures her color palette. Her art includes silhouettes of Charlotte residents, and she strives to incorporate the ‘‘City’s energy.’’ Beyond the station, underpasses at 11th St and I-277 along with a Signal House include Dowell’s color rich murals.

Parkwood

Maria Artemis, Tectonic Suite
2018
Artemis’ art explores the geological events that shaped Charlotte. Her windscreen glass and canopy columns include maps of the Carolinas, and the platform is stamped with fossil shaped arcs and colored glass aggregate. The artist chose 30 boulders for the adjacent landscape illustrating the slate and granite belts adjacent to Charlotte and responsible for the region’s gold formation. She also replaced 4 standard benches with hand carved granite seating.

9th Street

Anna Valentina Murch & Douglas Hollis, UMBRA
2018
Charlotte’s historic textile industry and the environmental benefits of alternative transportation options drove the signature station design by artists Anna Valentina Murch (1949 - 2014) and Douglas Hollis. The use of a tensioned membrane for the ten shelters was forward thinking and a demonstration of technological advancements in the industry. Each component chosen by the artists is in response to environmental conditions, qualities of light, and movement – both of trains and people. The fanning canopies, curved benches and blue glass windscreens, platform of blue glass aggregate all flow together to create a collectively airy, uplifting experience for riders. 

Charlotte Transportation Center/Arena

Andrew Leicester, Bobbins
2007
Six brick-clad bridge columns mimic the Arena bobbins and continue the artist’s focus on Carolina’s textile industry past. By switching colors, the Zig Zag Reversed Twill Weavepaving pattern connects the outdoor platform and interior Transportation Center.

3rd Street

Jody Pinto, Light Station
2007
With her team of an architect, engineer, lighting designer and fiberglass fabricator, Pinto transforms the station with color and light. The green and berry canopies illuminate the platform with sunlit hues by day and fluorescent lighting at night. A three-color zig-zag paving pattern enlivens the platform, taking on a stage-like quality. 

Bland Street

Yuriko Yamaguchi, Dream Keepers
2007
Yamaguchi’s four small bronze sculptures compose a narrative work of art using forms symbolizing the growth and mystery of our lives. Her reinterpretations of seemingly familiar objects create visual riddles, prompting viewers’ curiosity and imagination. Detailed surface textures invite closer inspection and touch.

East/West Boulevard

Thomas Thoune, Camden Wall
2007
Plates, vases, glass, and broken ceramics collected from the community by the artist are recycled into mosaic art. Using machine cog shapes for 33 separates vignettes, the 360’ wall captures life in the South End. The cogs weave Charlotte’s history and lore with present day images and neighborhood scenes. While Thoune was in residence at McColl Center for Visual Art, a community collection of materials for the artwork was initiated. The community responded enthusiastically, bringing their items and their stories about each donation. These personal items and mementos are now memorialized in the art wall.

Scaleybark

Thomas Sayre, Furrow
2007
Award-winning Furrow, six large concrete and steel sculptures cast from Carolina earth, pays tribute to Scaleybark’s agricultural past. The 18’ sculptures were inspired by harrow disks, the agricultural tool used behind a plow to cultivate farmland. The title refers to the cultivation trench, or “V,” left in farmland behind a plow. Each disk weighs 11-tons, yet appears fragile, belying its significant weight and density. The discs were cast and cured onsite over the course of 3 months using the artist’s signature “earthcasting” process and truckloads of dirt excavated from the light rail project. 

Tyvola Station

Dennis Oppenheim, Reconstructed Dwelling
2007
Internationally renowned American artist Dennis Oppenheim (1938-2011) challenges passengers to contemplate the unconventional with Reconstructed Dwelling, his monumental sculpture for the plaza underneath the Tyvola platform. The art is composed of recognizable house elements and common building materials constructed in an uncommon way. The sculpture is positioned over a painted floor plan of a typical neighborhood home that becomes a stage for chance encounters. 

Archdale

Richard C. Elliott, Tower of Light
2007
Recognized for his large-scale installations created by layering thousands of plastic industrial reflectors, Richard Elliott (1945-2008) transforms the Archdale elevator into a prismatic display of color, light, and motion. Inside, natural light passing through the multicolored patterns simulates the visual effect of stained-glass.

West End

George Bates, The Worth of That, is That Which It Contains and That is This, and This With Thee Remains
2021
George Bates’ illustrative imagery blends depictions of the present day with historical research from the Johnson C. Smith University archives, yearbooks, and the Charlotte Library. In his windscreen art glass, he showcases individual and collective histories while also illustrating iconic images that speak to the “slice of life” moments in Charlotte’s West End. Much of the city is laid out within a circular form, so Bates uses a circle motif in his designs to reference the city’s growth, cultural intersections, complex relationships, and the value contained within them.

Jim Hirschfield & Sonya Ishii, Gilded Threads

2021 
Hirschfield and Ishii’s windscreen art begins with the community’s history and people and uniquely reaches out to people using the transit system today. They created gateways to Charlotte’s past speaking to the importance of human relationships. Each of the shelters display a super-sized picture postcard image from the Charlotte Library’s archives as if one could simply walk into the image and find themselves on the streets of Charlotte in an earlier period. However, an overlying gold leaf grid pattern, which references Charlotte’s gold mining history as well as its status as a banking center, metaphorically prevents the viewer from passing through the glass and traveling back in time. The side panels exhibit exact scaled historical postcards along with their personal messages of the time.

Nancy Gutkin O’Neil, Making Connections

2015 
O’Neil, gathered materials from over 40 Charlotte neighborhood residents, local organizations, and archives to create historically rich compositions. Her collages incorporate historic and contemporary photos, as well as flora and fauna, maps, text, and ephemera. They have a woven appearance, with strips of color and imagery moving in and out as they layer across the composition. Every stop’s unique design reflects local character and highlights key features of each community without limiting them to a single definition. After acquiring extensive information on the people and history of each neighborhood, she developed vibrant and vivid designs, which spur thought about the past and spark imaginations about the future. 

Amy Cheng, Worlds Within Worlds 

2021
Cheng’s windscreen art highlights the difference between home and work life. At the office, workers focus, sift through data, and prize objectivity. In contrast, at home we, mentally and emotionally, live in a more liminal space. Her designs, with their sense of movement and layered complexity refer to the subjectivity of our emotions, the dreaminess of free association and the magic available to imagination. Trees appear in three of the designs, and the fourth features a single rose. The Elizabeth neighborhood was once home to a massive garden nurturing more than a thousand species of roses. The designs are enclosed within frames reminiscent of Art Deco, and the side panels show a variety of lace-like patterns. Cheng also designed the vehicle seating fabric and ceiling graphics.