By Melody Hanatani
Daily Press Staff Writer

DOWNTOWN There’s a new approach to promoting the virtues of sustainability, one that doesn’t include staged demonstrations or city ordinances, but rather the stroke of a paint brush.

Big Blue Bus (BBB) officials on Tuesday unveiled a month-long art installation that aims to promote recycling and sustainability, the product of four students from the Art Institute of California-Los Angeles, which is located in the Sunset Park neighborhood.

The installation is being showcased at the Big Blue Bus Transit Store on Broadway as an element of the agency’s efforts to promote public transit’s role in environmentalism, keeping cars off the streets and would-be drivers on buses. The quasi-gallery will be commemorated into an art book that will be distributed during an Earth Day celebration on the Third Street Promenade next month.

The four art pieces were created by Daniela Gill, Laura Moyer, Sara Parras and Amanda Rios, students in the Art Institute’s interior design and graphic design programs, which recently began incorporating sustainability issues into its curriculum, teaching students about using recycled material and low VOC paint in their art works.

The installation took on two different themes, with two pieces focused on buses and their role in saving the environment and the other half on ways to go “green.”

Moyer, a senior interior design student at the Art Institute, explained the intent with one of the works — a grouping of various clear cylindrical containers filled with toy cars — was to demonstrate visually just how many cars and gas mileage can easily be replaced by one bus. Each of the cars stacked in the containers represented one million gallons of gasoline. In the center of the exhibit was a tall empty container, topped with a toy Big Blue Bus.

“I thought there would be more of an impact visually,” Moyer said. “I wanted to emphasize that one bus can make a major difference.”

On the wall to the left of the exhibit is a replica of a vintage Blue Bus illustrated with thumbtacks on a board. Each of the 885 thumbtacks represents one million gallons of gasoline, all together telling the whole picture of the amount of gas that public transportation saves in gasoline each year.

Hanging to the right of the toy car exhibit is the “elements of recycling,” a piece that takes the periodic table layout in describing the type of everyday objects that are recyclable, but often aren’t, such as “Og” for optical glasses and “Ip” for iPod.

“Not everyone goes the extra mile to recycle,” freshman graphic design student Rios said.

Tying into the “green” periodic table — both literally and figuratively — is a collection of items gathered from the local recycling center such as water bottles and televisions, each covered in blue or yellow paint, which when fused together create the color green.

In addition to promoting sustainability issues, the purpose of the exhibits are to bring a youth voice to the discussion table on environmental matters, according to BBB spokesman Dan Dawson, who approached the Art Institute last year about partnering up for the installation.

BBB Director Stephanie Negriff noted the importance of youth involvement in furthering the environmental cause.

“With innovative thinking and elaborate design, the paradigm shift is in the works,” Negriff said.

The students were selected by the school as one of the top members in their programs, spending several months both conceptualizing and researching possible art pieces.

“It’s looking through the eyes of young people,” Michelle Estrellado, the director of public relations and marketing for the Art Institute, said.

The exhibit will stay up through at least mid-April, after which point it will be replaced by a new installation on the 80th anniversary of the Big Blue Bus. The installation will also be created by Art Institute students, Dawson said.

The Big Blue Bus has already partnered with at least one after-school program that will bring elementary school students to the Transit Store to view the exhibit and learn more about sustainability, one of the goals in hosting the installation, Dawson said.

“We wanted to get kids involved,” Dawson said. “Students learn better from other students.”

melodyh@smdp.com