Meet the Artist: Geneus1

Originally from Alameda, raised in Union City, and now a Vallejo resident, Gene Buban dabbled in art his entire life. He gravitated to digital art, teaching himself on his home computer in the early 1980s. He continued through high school learning on his own and then moved to a more traditional computer education from San Jose State University. In the 1990s he started learning and experimenting with virtual reality (VR) programming. Unfortunately, the raw computing power needed for VR at that time did not allow for much development. Gene revisited VR in 2016 and was able to work within its more robust capabilities. His art in the digital realm was progressing well, then COVID struck. This allowed him to better focus on his skills yet limited what he could do with the public until a project with SolTrans came along.

When Gene took on the project, he thought about what people in Vallejo need now, and peace came to mind. Gene felt his piece needed to go beyond 2D, so he created a multidimensional version of peace. His sculpture, named Peace 2.0, can be found in the center of the compass flower bed at the Vallejo Transit Center. The languages on the sculpture represent the languages of the Vallejo Sister Cities (Japanese, Swahili, Tagalog, Korean, Italian, and Norwegian) as well as the most common languages of the world-English, Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin), French, Hindi, and German. All the words are spelled out phonetically so that everyone can sound out the words and reflect on their meaning. The inner bar represents inner peace while the two intersecting circles infer a globe and world peace. Gene hopes everyone will recognize the sculpture as the peace symbol as it is a ubiquitous symbol, as well as finding some commonality with the languages represented.

Prior to this experience, Gene had never created an actual physical sculpture. He had to adapt his digital art skills to physical skills. He had to learn how to create the forms and bend rebar to be able to cast his piece. The gigantic sculpture had a final weight of just over 2,700 pounds, and the footing needed to support the piece was an additional 2,000 pounds of cement and steel. It took multiple people and a forklift to lift the piece from the parking lot over the trees to its final resting place in the flower bed.

We too hope that Peace 2.0 brings as much joy and peace to our riders and community as it has already done for us. Thank you, Gene, for your hard work and beautiful “Peace”. You can find Gene’s art on Instagram at Geneus_1 and on Facebook at Gene.Buban.