Title: Ascending
Artist: JeKaren Bell
Future Bus Shelter Location: Del Rey @ Veterans’ Center (Pending installation)
Description: My work combines mixed-media collage and digital illustration to explore themes of joy, belonging, and everyday wonder. I layer hand-created textures, photographs, and symbolic imagery to build vibrant visual stories inspired by the desert landscape, ancestral memory, and community life. Each piece begins with fragments—bits of paper, color, or pattern—that come together to form something whole, echoing the way people and places shape one another. My goal is to create art that feels alive and welcoming, offering a moment of connection to anyone who encounters it.
Artist Statement: My work is a celebration of joy as an act of belonging. Through mixed media, digital collage, and layers of color and texture, I explore the ways ordinary life—flowers on the sidewalk, faces in a crowd, patterns in the desert sky—can become portals into wonder. Each piece begins with fragments: paper, fabric, digital images, ancestral symbols. When they come together, they form something new—a reminder that beauty is often built from what we already have. I create to invite people back into connection—with themselves, with one another, and with the living world around them. My hope is that someone waiting for the bus will look up, smile, and feel a little more at home in this city we share.
Art Stop Bus Shelter Public Art Exhibit was created by the City Art Board for the purpose of making art more accessible to community members and enhancing the everyday experience of our public spaces.
