Four students from the George Mason University College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) now have their original animations displayed on screens across six Metro stations as part of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (WMATA) Art in Transit Program.
The animations were first on display in December and are now part of a full year’s residence at the stations through a new five-year partnership between the CVPA and the Metro to give students from Film and Video Studies, Computer Game Design, and the School of Art a continued opportunity to participate in the learning experience.
The program began when in the fall of 2023, a group of CVPA faculty and leadership met with Metro’s Art in Transit team to discuss opportunities for students to participate in the Program’s Digital Art Initiative.
“From the very first meeting, I was drawn to the Art in Transit Program’s evolving nexus of art, culture and community,” says School of Art Professor Gail Scott White in a news release. “It seemed like the perfect experiential learning opportunity for CVPA students to work through the processes of idea generation and concept development, receive individual mentorship and to create frame-by-frame animations of their own design that would be publicly displayed, reaching Metro viewers from all walks of life.”
White reached out to four students last spring: Valeria Hunt, Taka Hunter, Joseph Cameron Rhodes Murdock and Jennifer Perez.
These four students joined a pilot program to create 20-second animations to be displayed on screens in the Crystal City, Farragut North, NoMa-Gallaudet U, Gallery Place-Chinatown, L’Enfant Plaza and Metro Center stations.
“With Metrorail serving nearly half a million commuters every weekday, on average, the talents of these four CVPA students will reach an exponentially increasing number of people in the region while contributing to the program’s enriching mission,” notes George Mason CVPA in a statement from the news release.
