No Vapid Transit : Transportation: First of artworks intended to spruce up Metro Blue Line stations is unveiled.

Robert Peterson rides the Metro Blue Line just about every day.

Lately, the 68-year-old Long Beach resident has been wondering about “those things over there”--three unusual objects perched above the ice plant on the east bank of the Wardlow station.

Were they some sort of newfangled technology to relay train signals?

“They’re sculpture,” said Jon Moynes, project manager for the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission program conveniently dubbed Art for Rail Transit (A-R-T). “They’re for making up your own mind, I think.”

In time, thousands of other light-rail commuters will get a chance to ponder sculpture that Jacqueline Dreager sees as “planetary” in nature, all complementing her bronze sundial near the platform entrance.

A work Dreager titled “A Great Gathering Place,” officially unveiled Wednesday, is the first in a series of works intended to aesthetically enhance the 22 stations along the Blue Line’s 22-mile path from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles, an urban landscape heavy with industry, concrete and graffiti.

The transportation agency, facing a federal investigation for alleged misuse of Metro Rail funds, also justifies A-R-T’s $2.7-million expense as a lure to encourage ridership. The A-R-T budget represents 0.5% of the original budget adopted for the rail line.

“We have to sell the public on using public transportation, and this is all part of it,” said Supervisor Deane Dana, a member of the commission.

“Public art serves to foster civic and community pride,” said Janet Cusick, A-R-T’s director. “It not only enhances what we’re building, it provides personality and character.”

Over time, A-R-T will feature a range of artistic expressions, from the serious to the whimsical, Cusick said. At Long Beach’s 5th Street station, for example, Jim Isermann is to create a work titled “Failed Ideals,” a stained-glass homage to Long Beach landmarks that have fallen to the wrecking ball.

At the Imperial station beneath the Century Freeway, Joe Sam will create “Hide and Seek,” featuring sculptures of children peering out from behind immense concrete columns. At the Washington Street station, Elliott Pinkney is planning “Running for the Blue Line,” with three figures dashing for the train.

Artists selected for A-R-T were required to work with community representatives to ensure that the work is appropriate for the setting, Cusick said.

Dreager’s Blue Line period began two years ago, when Cusick suggested she join a field of 400 competitors seeking the commission. The field has expanded to 700 artists as other finalists were selected.

Dreager, 51, a Los Angeles artist who maintains a studio on Skid Row and founded an art program for the homeless, said she had always considered herself a “studio artist” and thought her abstract shapes would never be accepted in a public setting.

“I stretched myself from just being a a studio artist to going to another level,” Dreager said. This didn’t require her to compromise her art, she said, but rather represented “a challenge.”

The centerpiece of “A Great Gathering Place”--the name is derived from the Chumash Indians--is a universal sundial, inspired by the sundial at historic Rancho Los Cerritos nearby. A bronze globe, tilted to place Long Beach at the apex, sits atop a large disc that is etched with the Wallace Stevens’ poem, “The Planet on the Table.” Nearby rests a sculpted copy of “Adobe Days,” a historical novel by Sarah Bixby Smith. The Bixbys, former owners of Rancho Los Cerritos, were one of Long Beach’s founding families.

Dreager sculpted functional stools near the sundial. Nearby is a sculpture that resembles a comet in flight. Dreager said that object, as well as the three set on the opposite side of the tracks, all suggest the cosmos. Her fascination with space, she said, can perhaps be traced to her father, a Hollywood special-effects man who worked on such classics as “War of the Worlds,” in which aliens attack Los Angeles.

“I want people to make up their own minds. They look at them and let their imaginations run wild,” Dreager said. To have her work displayed in public before an audience of many thousands, she said, “is thrilling. It takes it out of the realm of elitism.”

And so the artist professed delight that Robert Peterson thought they might be radio transmitters.

For his part, Peterson definitely liked the sundial. “Yeah, that’s pretty nice, that deal there,” he said.