REGION : Young Artists Get Careers Rolling

Carlos Nieto III has found a wide audience, a captive one at that, for his artwork: Prints of his surrealistic painting of workers heading into a city have been placed on 2,000 public buses.

Every day an estimated 1 million people will see his work. And Nieto savors the exposure.

“I’m happy that everyone is going to see it,” said Nieto, 20, of Silver Lake. “I would like to ride the bus and see the people looking at it and hear what they say. I guess I’m a big attention-getter.”

Nieto’s art as well as that of 13 other young artists were placed on the inside of every Metropolitan Transportation Agency bus last week as part of the Young Artist Program.

In addition to Nieto, a John Marshall High School graduate, the other local artists include Matthew Ausberry, a 22-year-old Los Angeles City College student; Gulshan Ara Lucy, 17, of Koreatown, and Daniel Ochoa, 17, of Mid-City.

Maya Emsden, the MTA’s art program director, said the agency sought to promote the talents of young people and improve the interior of the buses while curbing tagging.

“By having a person with actual artistic talent printed up and put legally on the bus . . . their name would get a lot more recognition than somebody who would have an ugly tag on a bus for two or three days,” Emsden said.

“This is to let people know there are some incredibly talented young people in this city that deserve recognition,” said Emsden, whose MTA art projects have focused on Metro Rail stations.

Three judges--two college students and a representative from a public art group--chose the entries that were simply “good art, there was no other criteria,” Emsden said.

“Most of [the winners] are very serious about their art,” Emsden said. “They want to do it as a career. This is not a hobby.”

Ausberry, who worked with Eric Walker, 22, said he believed all along the work would be chosen. The pair created a tagger-style postcard of Los Angeles’ daytime beach beauty and nighttime skyline.

“While we were doing it we just knew we were going to win,” said Ausberry, who said he has won many contests. “This is another thing for the resume.”

For Nieto, winning the competition underscored his ambition to go to art school. Nieto works as a security guard to save money for tuition at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

“I want to go into illustration or product design,” Nieto said. “I’ve been drawing since I was a little kid.”