PUBLIC ART WORKS & PROJECTS
Only Love, Only Light
Los Angeles Metro Transit Authority
Only Light, Only Love, 2021 - MLK BLVD & CRENSHAW LA METRO STATION, Los Angeles, CA
Only Love, Only Light, 2017 - 2021
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Only Love, Only Light was fabricated for Martin Luther King Jr. Station. High resolution scans and scaled match prints of Smith’s mixed media collage which include fabrics, printed matter, calligraphy and reflective fragments are being translated into glass mosaic artwork panels by skilled artisans who specialize in working with professional artists. The artwork will be installed in a highly visible place for transit riders passing through Martin Luther King Jr. Station to enjoy. Only Love, Only Light lyrically weaves together the cultural richness of the community in visual punctuations pulled from fashion and pop culture. Calligraphy lines bring together words from speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as they are abstracted and transformed within her beautiful undulating composition influenced by the rhythm and movements of daily life. Reflective, mirror-like slivers within the mosaic will bring the movements and reflections of viewers into the piece to create a lively, ever-changing artwork. In the artist’s own words, “The flow of the city, fashion, the graffiti of my youth and Japanese calligraphy influence these gestures, as I extract what I see as the graceful and spiritual qualities in the written word and everyday life.”
Shinique and Only Love, Only Light at LA METRO’s MLK STATION
Matching color and creating a mosaic palette
Sunburst
Chicago Transit Authority
Sunburst, 2021
The Sun has been a prominent symbol for all cultures throughout time – representing life, health, fortune, freedom and joy. Smith’s artwork has been inspired by the meanings and depictions of the sun that she has long admired including those found in ancient Egyptian art and the beams and rays that embellish Art Deco architecture. Recently installed, Sunburst seeks to highlight the bus turnaround’s newly installed solar powered charging stations and to radiate bright energy on this well-traveled corner in all weathers. Smith’s sculpture painted with a varied gradient of sparkling golds will also be complimented by a bus shelter adorned with delicate gold calligraphic drawings in the glass that accompany the Sunburst’s warmth. Smith aspires for this artwork to be a focal point and a talisman of light for all who travel the Austin bus turnaround.
I Am Love
Wabash Arts Corridor - Chicago
I Am Love, 2017 at 1600 S. State Street, Chicago, IL Located at Media Production Center at Columbia College Chicago and created for Wabash Arts Corridor, STREET LEVEL II. I am Love was spontaneously created in layers with words of affirmation and Love.
Lead Artist: Shinique Smith, Lead Curator/Producer: Neysa Page-Lieberman, Site and Production Manager: Abie Vasquez, Sponsorship
Lead Artist: Shinique Smith, Lead Curator/Producer: Neysa Page-Lieberman, Site and Production Manager: Abie Vasquez, Sponsorship
Joy’s Way
UCSF Medical Center - San Francisco
Joy’s Way, 2016
New York-based artist Shinique Smith interpreted inspiring words into an expansive wall mural in a first-floor corridor of the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay. This landscape of calligraphic words empowers with aspirational messages through the length of this transitory space. Approx: 90-ft
Smith conducted creative workshops with pediatric patients where they articulated their personal thoughts and experience through drawing and poetry. The poems were so strong that Smith anchored the mural by highlighting the poems of these young patients in the seating areas along the corridor and their work became inspiration for her sprawling mural at the new UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay.
Shine Space
Mural Arts - Philadelphia at 8th & Diamond
Smith and young artist stenciling stars on the ground of performance area.
Young poets perform at the dedication of Shine Space.
Seven Moon Junction
The Greenway, Boston
Shinique Smith, Seven Moon Junction, 2014 Photo: Geoff Hargadon Recognized by the Americans for the Arts for the National Best in Public Art Year in Review Award in 2015, Smith’s monumentally scaled mural Seven Moon Junction was housed in Boston's Dewey Square Park. The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy commissioned Shinique Smith to create a new 70-by-76-foot temporary mural, Smith's Greenway mural was one component of her interdisciplinary exhibition, "Shinique Smith: BRIGHT MATTER" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In Seven Moon Junction, the artist used a detail from her 2013 painting "Seven Moons," because its circular composition and color palette and the geometry of the building felt as if they belonged together. In shifting the scale of the painting's collage and counterbalancing them with a braided sculptural element to enrich the texture, Smith created a composition tailored to the architecture of the Dewey Square wall. Smith's mural extends beyond the wall, as it attunes to the space in which it sits, radiating energy outward to the rest of the city and its occupants.
Mother Hale’s Garden, 2013 - New York Metro Transportation Authority
Mother Hale’s Garden, 2013 Glass and ceramic mosaic, laminated glass Graced with exuberant brush strokes and a vibrant collage, Mother Hale’s Garden created by Shinique Smith is inspired by the loving and generous nature of Mother Clara Hale who, for more than 50 years, cared for children -- orphaned, sick and from broken homes -- and helped transform their lives. Totaling approximately 6,672 square feet, the monumental artwork is composed of mosaic located on the façade and laminated glass in windows of the new Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot building located on Lenox Avenue between 146th and 147th Street in Central Harlem. Shinique Smith collected clothing, fabric and other cast-off materials from the community surrounding Hale House and the Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot to incorporate in her original artwork. A child’s drawing of a bus stop found near Hale House influenced her deeply and became the source of inspiration for the artwork. “This (child’s) drawing inspired my palette,” Smith said. “We are all connected by childhood dreams and memories threaded through clothing and the things we consume and discard. I have taken these unwanted bits and woven them into a garden in an attempt to embody the spirit of Mother Clara, creating beauty and grace from humble materials.”
Smith works in a variety of artistic media, including collage, painting, sculpture, and video.Her work is known for the vast vocabulary of collected objects that alternate with fluid calligraphic lines and movement, suggestive of qualities that resonate on a personal and social scale. The original work of Mother Hale’s Garden is composed of ten large‐scale panels of colorful painted collage and centers on a spiritual motif of mother and child‐like figures embracing in an abstracted garden. Smith worked with Mosaika Art & Design to translate the original work into mosaic, using tiles uniquely made for the project to create roughness and texture on the surface, a process similar to a collage.
In May 2012, Smith worked with first grade students at PS 242, Young Diplomats Magnet Academy, to draw flowers and incorporated the drawings into the art glass for the north and south windows of the Bus Depot building. The art glass is fabricated by Peters Studios. In keeping with the new Mother Clara Bus Depot status as a certified green building, Mother Hale’s Garden was created by weaving discarded materials into a vibrant garden. The result is a monumental work as the artist’s tribute to Mother Clara Hale as well as to the people in the community.
Smith’s flower drawing workshop with first grade students at PS 242, Young Diplomats Magnet Academy, Harlem, NY
Window detail with PS 242 student drawings incorporated
Mosaic detail
