Completed Projects

​​Maria Arte​​mis

Atlanta, GA

Tectonic Suite

Landscape, boulders, granite benches, stamped concrete, glass aggregate, laminated windscreen glass, passenger shelter columns

2018

Maria Artemis is interested in what is unknown about a place that initially seems familiar and known to us.  Her visual exploration of the geology below the surface of the Parkwood Station site is an invitation to wonder at the dynamic systems of the planet and more specifically the impact of these ancient changes on the Charlotte area.  She references local geology, plate tectonics and the roles of fossil and gold formations in her station designs. 

​​

In the triangular landscape area in front of the platform, Artemis replicated an important distinction of what runs beneath the surface of the Charlotte area.  Specifically, the geological division of Charlotte into two different areas and time periods: the Charlotte Belt – the igneous rock beneath the center of the City – and the Carolina Slate Belt that is to the east.  The boundary between the two belts runs northeasterly and the pathway crossing the park-like triangle marks the same directional orientation.  Thirty boulders selected by the artist from nearby quarries sit intermittently along both edges of the pathway, echoing the boundary between the two geological areas in miniature form.  Her boulders in the landscape and granite benches on the platform jointly embody the past geological events.

Artemis' windscreen art glass includes colorful maps of the Carolinas alongside timelines to mark each geological era over the last 500 million years.  The platform concrete includes arcs of blue glass on the northbound platform and gold glass on the southbound platform.  There is also a reproduction of a Pre-Cambrian fossil found in Stanly County North Carolina, stamped into the concrete platform.

The artist's work at Parkwood Station expresses geological themes on the platform in both apparent and discreet ways, encouraging riders to seek knowledge beyond their initial experience at the stop.

Click here to learn more about the Parkwood Station Windscreens

Artist Bio

Maria Artemis is an Atlanta based artist who holds an MS Degree from Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Architecture, an MFA from the University of Georgia, and a BA in psychology from Agnes Scott College. Artemis taught for over 25 years at the Atlanta College of Art. She is an award winning artist who has completed numerous public art projects, including a General Services Administration Art-in-Architecture commission at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Chamblee, Georgia and for the University of Minnesota Biomedical Discovery District in Minneapolis.  Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Mayors Fellowship in the Arts Award, Georgia Women in the Visual Arts Award, and a Ford Foundation Grant.​