Art Soars to Rafters in the S.F. Airport

A little boy scrambled past a check-in counter, whirled around and began dancing on a beam of shimmering colors.

He was enjoying the effects of a 76-foot-long prismatic sculpture suspended across a large skylight at San Francisco International Airport, where weary travelers are treated to a refreshing diversion of artistic visions.

Using a dozen 9-foot plexiglass prisms, “Light Line” projects luminous pools of rainbow colors across the floors and the walls in patterns that continually change with the time of day and seasons of the year.

“The prisms alone do not represent the art form,” said sculptor Charles Ross, who has created similar works for airports in Dallas, Kansas City, San Diego and Anchorage.

“Rather, it is their exact placement and alignment within the building. As light penetrates each prism, a pattern and flow of spectrum is created in time.”

Aerial Sculpture

Down a corridor and floating above a busy escalator, an enormous and intricate aerial sculpture, “Flight Patterns” by Larry Kirland, fills more than 18,000 cubic feet of space with hovering pulses of light and color.

Terminal art isn’t for the weak, but at San Francisco’s cavernous airport, the permanent collection of 67 large-scale works by contemporary artists is a sight to behold. All the works, the culmination of an 11-year project, have air travel as a theme.

“The collection is the city’s most important new cultural resource,” said Mary Miles Ryan, consultant for the San Francisco Arts Commission project. “It now stands as one of the foremost municipal contemporary art collections in the country, serving as a catalyst for similar programs in other airports.”

Floating Work

Kirland’s sculpture, which cost $150,000, uses 1,500 pieces of aluminum tubing, sheeting and screening, individually suspended from steel cables, that “float” with air movements. It contains shapes and symbols of flying objects, flight patterns and landmarks as seen on an air traffic control radar screen.

“It’s a very precise piece,” Regina Almaguer, curator of the city’s Art in Public Places program, said of Kirland’s work. “It’s noticeable and striking and changes as you walk around it.

Almaguer said the collection’s pieces, commissioned or bought for exhibition, were generally big and time-consuming and took a lot of discipline and professionalism to produce, especially the aerial sculptures.

“It’s necessary to know the artist, the medium and their professional maturity to achieve the project,” Almaguer said, adding that artists often have to work with architects, building contractors, engineers, inspectors and supervisors.

“It’s almost like a small construction project, but more exciting.”

One of the final four acquisitions for the collection is a colorful 14-foot-high, 42-foot-long tin mural depicting a collage of San Francisco scenes by Los Angeles sculptor Tony Berlant.

Scenes of City

Berlant made “Dancing on the Brink of the World,” in 18 sections in his studio before the mural was assembled on a wall in the south terminal area. It forms patchwork scenes of the familiar Golden Gate Bridge and Coit Tower and weaves in imagery from the Costanoans, the original Indian inhabitants of San Francisco.

“It’s made of used tin with nicks and scratches but it doesn’t matter,” Almaguer said. “It draws people in, they get close to it to look at the details.”

Other works on view for the 26 million travelers who annually depart or arrive at the airport include three panels of hand-painted ceramic glass and tile mosaics of San Francisco scenes by Joyce Kozloff; a set of laser-carved wooden architectural models by Don Potts; a black granite “Stacking Stones” exhibit by Japan’s Seiji Kunishima; and two large oil on canvas paintings by Willard Dixon, “Death Valley II,” and “Above Bolinas.”

Under San Francisco’s Art in Public Spaces program, up to 2% of the total construction budget for new city buildings and parks is set aside to acquire public art, to enrich civic spaces and humanize and activate the surrounding environment.

Almaguer said a section of the airport’s north terminal has drawn countless visitors, where the works of Northern California artists are clustered.

A Chance to See Art

“A lot of people who are traveling may not get to a museum or gallery, so this gives them a chance to see the local artists who have had an impact,” Almaguer said.

The permanent collection, combined with revolving exhibits put on by the Airports Commission, provides a pleasurable way for travelers to revive themselves, especially during tedious delays.

“I can’t imagine the airport without the art; it would seem empty, impersonal,” Almaguer said. “And there’s nothing worse than being stuck in an airport with nothing to do.”