Pico Station
Time and Presence, 1993
Robin Brailsford, artist
Brailsford's Time and Presence at Pico Station examines the disparity between human scale and the vastness of the earth and the cosmos. Two twenty-foot steel canopies were plasma-cut with images of the earth and the solar system. Each of the colorful panels casts changing patterns of light and shadow on people waiting, the platform pavement, and passing trains.
The central image of Brailsford's north canopy is the solar system, flanked by two triangular forms that represent the mathematical symbols for "less than" and "greater than" and allude to the expanding and contracting universe.
Brailsford's south canopy presents a triptych of the earth flanked by images of an orchid and a sea turtle. The copper-colored map of the earth is of the super-continent Gondwanaland, the prehistoric continent that combined the current seven continents. The iris symbolizes the plant kingdom and life on land while the turtle symbolizes the animal kingdom and life in the sea. These symbols represent life as it existed long before the appearance of human beings on earth.
“When I do public art, I make things that belong to everybody.”