The images of these mosaic panels are inspired the geological history of the ancient Glacial River Warren and its tributary, the Mississippi River, which flooded this valley 12,000 years ago. The Glacial River Warren was an outflow of ice-age Lake Agassiz that created the valley that now holds the Minnesota River. The river was as wide as 5 miles and as much as 250 feet deep. It is thought that the Glacial River Warren created a waterfall larger than Niagara Falls in what is now St. Paul.
Janet Lofquist is a regional and national public artist from Minneapolis. For more than 25 years, she has created artwork for college campuses, libraries, parks and transit and streetscape projects.
Lofquist works in a variety of materials, from metals, to stone to wood and even landscaping. Completed works have ranged in scope from architecturally integrated treatments, sculptural environments, gathering spaces and free standing sculptures. In her work, Lofquist explores the relationship of site and context, art and architecture/landscape, and artist and community. Her process starts with a community conversation as she researches and explores the sites’ historical, cultural and environmental phenomena in order to create a unique sense of place.
She has won numerous grants and awards from Minnesota State Arts Board, Forecast Public Art, the Jerome Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
janetlofquist.com
Hive, Delmar Loop station; St. Louis, MO 2009
Each artist that created public art for the Green Line worked extensively with platform designers and the community. Each artist was given architectural drawings of the platforms with their dimensions and pertinent information as to placement and integration of public art.
This is a basic architectural drawing indicating measurements and materials for areas where the artwork will attach to the station structure. This was one of the specification documents provided to the artist to inform their design of the art.
This is a drawing created by the artist to indicate the materials and methods for attaching the art to the station structure.
The following two images are of two proposed design concepts and how they would be integrated into the architectural structure of the station.
From here, even more detailed drawings were created to make the mosaic glass tiles, called smalti, that were then applied to these surfaces. There were many variations and design steps to achieve the final product at each station. In this case, there was also the installation of thousands of small tiles – that took a while!