$1.4-Million in Funds for Art Projects : Public art: Four commissioned works will be erected on three sites at L.A.’s Union Station Gateway Center.

Three teams of artists and one individual artist received commissions Monday for four public art projects totaling about $1.4 million. The projects will be erected on three sites at Los Angeles’ Union Station Gateway Center, a three-year construction site for a $320-million transit center planned for the Union Station area.

Selected for the largest project was the team of artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt, and architect Paul Diez, who will create a pedestrian bridge at the end of the Gateway Center, overlooking the 101 Freeway. The bridge’s stairs will come out of a small courtyard area featuring a large collage floor painting of faces of ethnically diverse founders of Los Angeles. Atop the bridge will be a walkway enabling commuters to look over the freeway and large aquarium tanks featuring fish once native to the Los Angeles River.

Creating five winglike bus shelters for the center’s main plaza area running parallel to Vignes Street will be the team of artists Kim Yasuda and Noel Korten, and architects Torgen Johnson and Matthew C. Vanderborgh. The artists will incorporate contemporary anecdotes in the paving underneath the shelters, which have been structured to funnel rain water onto the plants below. Additionally, the artists plan to construct museumlike display cases throughout the plaza area, which Korten hopes will be taken over by “community-based museums” with small changing exhibitions.

The third site, a mini-park at the corner of Macy and Vignes streets called “Gateway to East Los Angeles” will feature two projects. The first will be a large black iron fence by sculptor Michael Amescua, made in the Mexican style of papel picado (paper cutouts). Its subjects will include animals, the elements and Aztec iconography. The other project at Macy and Vignes will be a collaborative one with painters Roberto Gil de Montes and Elsa Flores, sculptor Peter Shire and graphic artist Donna Okeya. Their work will feature a number of large free-standing sculptural shapes, including arches, pyramids and columns, covered in tiles with paintings of subjects ranging from mermaids and pre-Columbian imagery to angels and the Virgen de Guadalupe.

The project board agreed in the jury stage to raise the art budget from $1 million when the arts panel recommended that “The Gateway to East Los Angeles” site should incorporate two projects; the $250,000 budget had called for one. In addition, the board accepted the recommended Sun-Wyatt-Diez project, which came up almost double the site’s $500,000 budget.

Although the final art budget is still being worked out, Ted Tanner, executive vice president of Union Station Gateway Inc., said the increase will be “figured as an additional project cost. There are special monies available for enhancement--for things that increase public enjoyment and participation in public transportation.”

The project is funded by federal transportation funds and state and local matching grants, but Tamara Thomas, administrator of the art projects, plans to apply for additional arts grants. She said that runners-up may be commissioned for smaller works associated with the projects, including benches, indoor murals and additional tile or metalwork.