WESTWOOD/RANCHO PARK METRO STATION
Public Art Commission, 2012–2016
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Westwood/Rancho Park Station, Expo Line Phase 2
10800 Exposition Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064
Project Overview
In 2012, Abel Alejandre was selected as one of eight artists commissioned to create permanent public artworks for the Metro Expo Line Phase 2 expansion. His installation at the Westwood/Rancho Park Station comprises twelve large-scale porcelain enamel on steel panels distributed across four gateway arches and eight seating modules throughout the station platform.
The commission represents a significant public art project integrating Alejandre’s signature graphite-based realism with the technical demands of permanent outdoor installation. The work synthesizes his ongoing investigations of community, narrative, and observational portraiture within the context of civic infrastructure serving over 10,000 daily commuters.
Artistic Concept
The installation presents a cinematic panorama of transit life, depicting commuters in moments of movement and waiting. Rather than traditional cityscape imagery, Alejandre focused on human presence at ground level, creating a sequential narrative across the station platforms. The compositions employ deliberate temporal collapse, combining historical and contemporary modes of dress to weave together past and present narratives of the Westwood/Rancho Park neighborhood.
Key iconographic elements reference local history: a gardener and child reaching for an origami crane evoke the area’s Japanese-American community and the nurseries that once flourished in Sawtelle’s Little Osaka; a wounded soldier on crutches acknowledges the nearby Veterans Affairs campus. These carefully researched details ground the work in site-specific cultural memory while maintaining universal themes of transit, community, and daily ritual.
The low vantage point of the compositions creates an unusual viewer relationship. Passengers looking up at the panels encounter figures from a child’s perspective, with shoes, body language, and spatial relationships conveying personality and social dynamics. This formal strategy invites sustained observation and personal identification with the depicted commuters.
Technical Execution
Each panel consists of three individual steel tiles fabricated using porcelain enamel application, a permanent, weather-resistant medium suited to high-traffic public environments. Alejandre’s original graphite drawings were transferred onto the tiles through a photographic process before being fired at high temperatures to fuse the imagery permanently to the steel substrate.
The fabrication was completed by Winsor Fireform in Washington state, specialists in architectural porcelain enamel. The finished tiles were then mounted in custom steel frames and installed at the station in 2016. The technical complexity of translating Alejandre’s intricate graphite work into a durable public medium required close collaboration between artist and fabricator over the four-year commission period.
Documentation and Legacy
The project is documented through an oral history interview conducted by Alan Hiroshi Nakagawa at Los Angeles Metro offices. This recording, along with documentation of other Metro Art program commissions, has been archived at the Smithsonian Institution, ensuring the project’s place in the broader historical record of public art in Los Angeles.
The commission generated substantial press coverage across architecture, urbanism, and art media, and the work remains accessible to the public daily as part of Metro’s permanent collection. Several original panels and studies from the project have entered private collections.
Project Significance
The Westwood/Rancho Park commission demonstrates Alejandre’s ability to scale his intimate studio practice to monumental public scale while maintaining the precision and psychological depth characteristic of his gallery work. The project represents a significant example of how figurative realism can function within contemporary public art, offering narrative richness and community engagement alongside aesthetic and technical achievement.
Fellow commissioned artists for Expo Line Phase 2 included Shizu Saldamando, Susan Logoreci, Nzuji de Magalhaes, Constance Mallinson, Carmen Argote, Judithe Hernandez, and Walter Hood.
Press Coverage (Selected)
Los Angeles Times, LAist, NBC Los Angeles, Curbed Los Angeles, KCET, Santa Monica Mirror, Metro Art Program, among others.