The daily commute for La Mesa transit riders just got a lot more colorful, with two new murals now completed at the Grossmont Transit Center.
The pieces, done by San Diego artist Maxx Moses, are on the bus and trolley sides of the station and feature unique designs that explore themes of duality, movement and peace. They were created through a partnership between Moses and the Metropolitan Transit System called “Color the Corridor,” a 2022 initiative from Moses to bring more art to the transit system and make it more inviting.
“Each one is very different; it could have been done by two different artists,” Moses said. “I want to show that this artist, Maxx Moses, is diverse. … This artist has a lot to say and a lot to convey. Like every human being, we all have a lot to say and a lot to express.”
Moses came up with the concept for “Color the Corridor” in 2020 while riding the trolley with his son from their Lemon Grove neighborhood. As he took photographs along their journey, he noticed that something was missing: art. He proposed the mural project to MTS that year, and the agency adopted it in 2022.
The murals at the Grossmont station — which serves bus lines 852 and 854 and the trolley’s Orange and Green lines — are also part of the MTS’ Better Transit initiative, which includes building better shade and lighting at transit stops and improving bike racks on the front of buses.
Over three and a half weeks, Moses and a small team of artists worked on the two murals — both about 20 feet high and 60 feet wide — navigating safety considerations for commuters, maneuvering around vending and ticket machines and strategically timing their work to avoid the busiest travel hours of the day.
One of the murals, “Float On,” depicts a fish swimming against a blue background, facing a black and white circular design, which to Moses represents duality.
The other mural, “Succession,” displays bright shades of orange and a large arrow, which Moses says pays homage to his graffiti roots.
“In graffiti lettering, arrows are always an important part of expression of direction, of movement, of power, of weaponry,” he said. “So it was nice to have an arrow in there, and played a significant part in my past and in my future.”
Creating murals at the MTS stations has been a “full circle experience” for Moses, he says. Early in his career, he would write his name on the streets and walls of the subway in New York City, and now he’s again creating art at public transit stations — but this time legally.
Moses says he wants these murals to align with the essence and energy of graffiti art — bold and vibrant — but he defines this art instead as “concrete alchemy,” a term he coined that is essentially the “transformation of blank spaces into beautiful works of artwork.”
While Moses and his team, which included artists SD Irie, Gibran Lopez and Just Jon 1, budgeted about two months for the project, Moses says their background in graffiti art, which inherently requires artists to work quickly, helped them create the works in a short period of time.
When graffiti artists are working in the street, “you’re forced to do the artwork under pressure,” Moses said.
“So what if the police are coming? It still has to be crispy and clean and powerful and dynamic,” he added.
The two murals join three others that Moses has completed for the “Color the Corridor” project. Those three are at the Massachusetts Avenue, Euclid Avenue, and 47th Street Trolley stations. He also completed a mural for MTS at the Encanto/62nd Street station in 2010.
MTS says it has three more murals under way with other artists along the UC San Diego Blue Line at the E Street Transit Center, which will be completed by December 2024, and at the Beyer Boulevard Trolley Station, which will be completed in 2026.
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