The Right Brain of MTC

“I didn’t know we had that kind of talent at MTC!”
“Are these really done by people who work here?”
(Yes, they are!)

Sometimes we get caught up in the daily grind and forget the rest of the world. Not so for a surprising number of MTC employees for whom the world provides inspiration for expression. And that inspiration comes in as many forms as there are differences in expression:

Amy Lee, a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialist at MTC, commented, “Sometimes it’s hard to realize my true feelings and thoughts [so] I draw and let my emotions flow out on a piece of paper. I was inspired to draw the beauty of an angel after the death of my friend. Her appearance had changed a lot because of the medication. I remember one time she was lying in her bed, looking at her old picture, and she asked me, ‘Will I ever look the same as I was before?’ I didn’t know how to answer her question nor did I know how to comfort her at that moment. This drawing is my expression of her beauty as it will always be in my heart.”

Photographer Rick Kos, another MTC GIS specialist, expressed it this way: “I have always felt that I was born into the wrong time. Contemporary American society often seems devoid of mystery, spontaneity and the simple savoring of life that people in other countries and cultures seem to innately understand. Nonetheless, I sometimes set out to find these traits in the everyday world that surrounds me. I try to see past the ugly suburban sprawl and our blatant attacks on the natural environment to find something — anything! — that reminds me that beauty and peace still exist. As I get older, it seems that if I try hard enough, I can find it almost anywhere — in a quiet cemetery, a lonely railroad track in the woods, a placid lake or a tiny garden hidden behind a rusty chain-link fence. Now that I live in the heart of urban San Francisco, I am enjoying the challenge of finding such places amidst the clutter of buildings, cars, people and noise. The photographs I am displaying here were taken in the early 1990s. The cemetery photos are from Savannah, Georgia — the same cemetery, in fact, that is featured on the cover of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” The other photographs were taken along trails in Marin County as the morning fog was beginning to lift and the sun started to shine through the trees. For me, the challenge has been to find the romance that seems to be lacking in my physical surroundings at first glance, but which I know exists… just slightly below the surface and around the corners that most everyone else hurries past.”

For artist Kevin Dadian, MTC’s resident marketing expert, a blatant attack of a different form was the inspiration for his tribute to friends lost in the World Trade Center. Earlier works, also on display, show a wide range of other sources of inspiration, from movement in general to the specifics of law.

Call Box Project Manager Linda Lee began doodling with a paintbrush just for fun after she saw someone else trying it. Originally concerned that art was only the limited domain of trained experts, soon she realized that even her work with MTC’s call boxes could provide inspiration for a lighthearted look at the world.

Robert Huang, project manager in MTC’s Transit Coordination and Access (TCA) section assembles collages that juxtapose images to create a completely new vision of reality. He begins with an inspiration or an idea and lets it grow organically as he collects, cuts and arranges the images. The process of looking for the “right” images is as much fun as putting them together. “I rarely know exactly how it’s going to turn out until it’s done,” he says. Intricate details feed into one another. Dazzling images emerge.

MTC Graphic Designer Peter Beeler put his artist’s eye behind the lens of a digital camera and captured the world largely from the child’s point of view. These gentle images show a quiet reverence for the unexpected.

Black and white photographs by GIS Coordinator Mike Skowronek attempt to portray unremarkable objects within the built environment in an interesting and unexpected manner, revealing his fascination with geometric shapes, patterns and figure-ground. They are inspired by the art and architecture of M. C. Escher and Gerritt Rietveld. To capture these images, he used an older, unsophisticated twin-lens reflex “box” camera when he was studying architecture as an undergraduate.

In contrast, Public Information Officer Catalina Alvarado’s black-and-white images focus on people at work and play in their communities. As a photojournalist and reporter before she joined MTC, Catalina covered the Belmont City Council and planning commission for the Belmont Courier. The work shown here at MTC appeared earlier in either the Belmont Courier or the Menlo-Atherton Recorder. (These two publications, part of a chain of four small weekly newspapers in San Mateo County, have since been sold and renamed.) Catalina developed the film and made each of the prints on display. Eventually, however, writing won out over picture taking as a long-term career for her.

Creative arrangements of mysterious objects provide a starting point for MTC Graphic Designer David Cooper. David studied painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts, and later earned his MFA from Mills College. It is clearly evident in his work that he has never lost his sense of humor.

Artworks by Pierce Gould, TCA transportation planner and art coordinator at MTC’s Lake Merritt Plaza offices, were done some time ago, but have a timelessness that makes them fresh today. He notes that “my more recent artistic pursuits happen in fits and starts (and never seem to get finished),” but that he dreams of possibly becoming “a successful abstract painter someday.”

Art captures the expected and the unexpected. In 1991, Legal Assistant Lois Tucker went sailing on a 42-foot yacht as one of a group of 15 sailors on three boats on a bareboat sailing charter from St. Lucia to Grenada. A highlight was the Grenadines, the island chain that runs between St. Vincent and Grenada. “I took this shot in the Tobago Cays, at the southern end of the Grenadines,” she reports. “The Tobago Cays are five tiny, uninhabited white-sand beach islands surrounded by marvelous coral reefs enclosing a turquoise sand-bottomed lagoon. The only way you can get there is by yacht. A T-shirt entrepreneur from Union Island arrived one afternoon in his red boat, probably hand-made in Bequia, to sell hand-painted shirts. Given what it took to get there, it’s the most expensive T-shirt I’ve ever bought in my life!”

Also reflecting the vacation mode, GIS specialist Garlynn Woodsong’s work captures the excitement of the moment in various adventures on the road. He comments: “Whenever I head to a foreign country, I sense that people there have a slightly different outlook on life than do the people in the place that I left behind. I often try to capture the feel of a place as I see it, through the lens of a camera. On my most recent trip to areas north and south of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, I found a rich mine of inspiration to draw upon, and have picked some of my favorites to share for this exhibition. Two of the photos, from Mexcaltitán and from San Blas, focus on the everyday use of bicycles by nonchalant locals. Another, from the hike to the waterfalls above Yelapa, is the purest expression of joy that I’ve ever captured on film. The image of the men playing dominoes, again in Mexcaltitán, perfectly represented the laid-back atmosphere of that island city, which is reputed by some to be the ancestral home of the Aztecs before they began their legendary migration to Mexico City. The palm tree photo makes me want to go back on vacation again, or to take up permanent residence right next to it. Whenever I look at it, I think of sitting in a hammock beneath it, sipping on a coconut drink.” (See photos by Garlynn Woodsong)

And so it is with art: an expression of the moment, a view of the world, captured for the rest of the world to see. Coming together from a wide range of sources and inspirations, these works of art reflect a diversity of expression from within MTC that we are delighted to see.

This exhibition was curated by MTC Advanced Systems Applications staff Janie Page, with assistance from MTC Graphics and MTC intern Melcher Fabi.