Wow! Look what rolled into Denver International Airport.

“Vochol Art on Wheels” is a Volkswagen Beetle covered in the traditional bead-work of the Huichol, an indigenous culture from Mexico. 

Eight Huichol artisans covered this car in more than two million glass beads.

The exhibit will be on display in the Jeppesen Terminal at Denver International Airport through August 31.

Photos courtesy Denver International Airport

As a Seattle gal, I’m no longer impressed – or alarmed – to find a Starbucks on every corner and in many area groceries, hardware stores and banks. But I am amused that Helsinki Airport is crowing about the fact that Finland’s first Starbucks coffee shop has opened up at the airport.

I’m far more interested in the airport’s art activities, which include a fashion gallery, a photo gallery and a design gallery.

Right now, the Design Gallery is exhibiting a variety of chairs created by Finnish designers.

The chairs aren’t just for show: passengers are allowed to sit down and enjoy “a unique moment of Finnish design and restfulness.” There are even headphones available to block out the noise of the airport.

And, over in the airport’s Fashion Gallery, there’s a catwalk where passengers can show off their travel outfits.

Heading to Helsinki? The Design Gallery is Gate 11, the Art Gallery by gates 16–17, the Photo Gallery is above gate 26 and the Fashion Gallery at Gate 31.

Photos courtesy Helsinki Airport. Coffee cups, courtesy National Archives, via Flickr Commons

Photo of "BREATHING_WALL_LAX" by Monika Bravo, New York, NY. Photo Credit: Kelly Barrie, Panic Studio L.A.

As part of its $4.11 billion facelift, Los Angeles International Airport has finished See Change, a giant public art installation in the newly renovated Tom Bradley International Terminal that includes 17 site-specific media artworks – by 17 different artists – displayed on a 58-screen, a 90-foot linear video filmstrip suspended from the ceiling and a media wall with 25 video monitors.

The artists include: Monika Bravo (an image of her work is above), Patty Chang and Noah Klersfeld, Seoungho Cho, Felipe Dulzaides, Todd Gray and Joseph Santarromana, Kurt Hentsch- läger, Louis Hock, Hilja Keading, Ryan Lamb, Chip Lord, Megan McLarney, Esther Me- ra and John Reed, Paul Rowley and David Phillips, Steve Shoffner, Pascual Sisto, Scott Snibbe, and Caspar Stracke.

The artwork ranges from a video collage on the media wall to images moving across the filmstrip, including Ryan Lamb’s “Five-Dimensional Parade,” in which 8mm footage of the 1960 Rose Bowl Parade appears as a distorted and Chip Lord’s work “To & From LAX,” which combines footage and still images from airports around the world, organized to represent actual flight patterns in and out of LAX.

Take a look.

It’s not essential to operations, but airport art can make a big difference in a traveler’s day. That’s why is always nice to see announcements of newly installed work.

This week Tuscon International Airport unveiled “Spirit of Southern Arizona,” an 18-foot-high commemoration of Arizona’s Centennial created as an artistic and scientific link between the region’s historic past and its technological future.

Here’s the description of the art work:

Six circular medallions encircle the sculpture’s base, representing southern Arizona’s past and present through images such as Tucson’s first airplane flight in 1910, a Tohono O’odham woman harvesting saguaro fruit and the University of Arizona’s radio telescope at Kitt Peak. Taking off from this cultural foundation is a futuristic airplane that leaves a sparkling contrail behind as it climbs into Arizona’s sky en route to the next 100 years of progress.

The solar aspect of the sculpture involves photovoltaic solar panel collectors which power the light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that create a changing display of colored lights and patterns at night.

Lead Artist Dr. Stephen Fairfield (Fairfield Enterprises) collaborated with Electrical Engineer Dr. Patrick Marcus (Marcus Engineering) and Emily Taylor (Emily Taylor Design) on the work, which now stands in a high-traffic spot, outside the rental car facility, adjacent to the exit lanes for the terminal roadway loop.

Tucson International Airport has loads of other art throughout the terminals, including permanent work and temporary exhibitions. Take a look at some of the art at Tucson airport here or here.

Here are more murals.

Cincinnati

In Cincinnati, Ohio in 1974 a portion of the city’s Union Railway Terminal was to be demolished, fourteen 20 foot by 20 foot Art Deco mosaic tile and painted stucco murals made by Winhold Reiss in the early 1930s were moved to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport, CVG.

The murals portray a wide range of local industrial history and have become a local tourist attraction. “We give around 150 tours a year for approximately 2,500 people,” said airport spokesperson Molly Flanagan, “and the murals are major part of that.”

In addition to the murals at CVG, the Art Deco-style terminal at Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport is home to two large oil-on-canvas paintings, created by William H. Gothard in 1937. “While today it is a general aviation airport, Lunken was at one time the largest commercial airport in the United States,” said Betsey Sanpere, creator of the Facebook page Arts in the Airports.

Tampa

Tampa International Airport has also rescued and restored the WPA-era murals now showcased on the airside of Terminal E.

In the late 1930′s, local artist George Snow Hill created seven murals depicting the history of flight for what was then Tampa’s newly built Peter O. Knight Airport. When a new terminal was built, in 1971, the murals went along, but most ended up rolled up and improperly stored away.

A triptych showing the first scheduled airline flight in history and the panel about the Wright Brothers were displayed at the airport’s executive suite, but the murals showing contributions made by Icarus and Daedalus, Archimedes, The Montgolfier Brothers, Otto Lilienthal and Tony Jannus were getting ruined in storage.

A major mural restoration project was linked to the construction of Tampa Airport’s Terminal E and, according to airport spokesperson Brenda Geoghagan, the post-security concourse area was designed to accommodate all seven murals.

More murals

These aren’t the only airports with murals that needed to be saved. The Marine Terminal at New York’s LaGuardia Airport is home to “Flight,” a Works Project Administration mural painted in 1939-42 by James Brooks that tells the story of human flight beginning with Greek mythology on through to the mid-20th century. 12 feet high and 235 feet long, is it supposedly the largest WPA mural ever attempted. The mural was painted over in 1952, but uncovered, restored and named a city landmark in 1980.

And Sanpere, of Arts in Airports, is monitoring the six, ten-foot by ten-foot, colorful, transit-themed murals by Xavier Gonzalez currently behind protective walls at the art-deco terminal at Lakefront Airport on Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. “The terminal is being accurately restored to its prior pre-Hurricane Katrina status and the entire city is waiting to see these paintings, which have been covered for decades,” said Sanpere.

While some murals need to be saved so the public can view them, at least one airport mural was created to save a view.

As part of a $35 million runway safety area improvement project completed in 2005, Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport had to relocate a creek and a roadway and construct a large embankment and a 30 foot by 800 foot retaining wall.

Rather than leave the wall blank and mar the view, the airport commissioned Eric Henn to paint a trompe l’oeil mural depicting a stone bridge, a federal style house and images from Kentucky horse farms.

The mural is so realistic-looking that “as an extra safety precaution we do publish information about the mural in publications typically accessed by visiting pilots,” said airport spokesperson Amy Caudill.

Here are few; more tomorrow…

When Lambert-St. Louis International Airport celebrated the re-opening of its tornado-damaged Concourse C on April 2nd, passengers were greeted with fresh shops and restaurants and a half-dozen new works of art.

But many community members had gathered weeks earlier to honor a 22-year-old piece of airport-owned art.

Black Americans in Flight mural at Lamber-St. Louis International Airport

On February 16, the St. Louis airport re-dedicated “Black Americans in Flight,” a multi-panel mural measuring 8 feet tall and 51 feet long that pays tribute to African-American achievements in aviation. Painted in 1990 by local McDonnell Douglas employees Spencer Taylor and Solomon Thurman, the mural includes 75 portraits, 18 aircraft, three American Bald Eagles, five unit patches and one spacecraft.

“Our airport is going back to its original vision and trying to be a cultural institution as well as a utilitarian one,” said Lambert spokesperson Jeff Lea, “We think it’s important that when people come to our airport they see a piece of history and major artwork they are not going to see in any other airport.”

Other airports around the country have rescued and restored historically significant murals as well.

San Jose

Shortly after the new Terminal B opened at Mineta San Jose International Airport in 2010, workers began demolishing the old Terminal C, which contained a 20-by-30 foot mural by noted California artist Millard Sheets.

Commissioned by the San Jose Mercury News in 1977, the site-specific mural marked San Jose’s 200th birthday and depicts San Jose history, from the earliest Native Americans through the Spanish settlers, the orchards, and early industry.

“Preserving and moving the mural was no easy task,” said Mary Rubin, senior project manager for the public art program in San Jose. The artwork was adhered directly to the sheetrock with a very strong adhesive that conservators at first decided was impossible to remove.

Removing the mural with the wall was considered, but Rubin said, “Luckily it turned out the mural could be peeled from the wall with minimal damage.”
In February, 2011, after several months of restoration, the mural was reinstalled at the airport’s international gates.

Miami

Two iconic, six-ton murals by Brazilian artist Carybé that were displayed for years in the American Airlines terminal at JFK Airport in New York are now at Miami International Airport.

“Rejoicing and Festival of the Americas” and “The Discovery and Settlement of the West” were created as site-specific work in 1960, but the massive murals, each almost seven high and 53 feet long, were destined for demolition along with the terminal. A rescue campaign resulted in the murals (and the walls behind them) being cut into panels for removal and restoration, trucked to Miami and, in 2009, installed to great fanfare in the South Terminal H at Miami airport.

“We’ve brought a bit of art and aviation history to the airport,” said Yolanda Sánchez, MIA’s fine arts & cultural affairs director. “They’re important culturally as well because we consider Miami to be the capital of the Americas and these murals tell passengers they’ve arrived in a city that welcomes all of these different cultures. It’s a perfect match.”

Tomorrow: murals at airports in Cincinnati, Tampa, Baltimore, Lexington, Kentucky and beyond.

Did I miss your favorite? Please add it to the comments section below.

A collection of antique and classic radios are currently on display at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California.

Look for these classics in the Vi Smith Concourse Gallery of Terminal A across from Gates 2 through 5 and in Terminal C across from Gates 18 through 21. They will be there till July 16, 2012.

The exhibition, titled Sound Design, features 86 radios from the 1930s, 40s and 50s, all on loan to the airport from the collection of Mark and Janet Hilbert.

Sonora Model No. 356

The Crazy Quilts exhibit by Visions Art Museum features sixteen contemporary quilt squares influenced by the popular Crazy Quilt style of the 1880s.

Other exhibits include mixed-media work created by artists from the Center for the Arts at TERI, a space designed for artists with autism and other developmental disabilities (in Terminal 2 West, through September 2012), Natural Basketry by Sue Kamin (Terminal 2 East, pre-security) and Quilting Creativity by the Mingei International Museum
Art of the People – School Outreach Program (Terminal 2 East, pre-security, through June 2012), which features African American–style quilt squares designed and constructed by students at area schools.

For more information about the arts exhibits at SAN, follow this link.

On her website, Katchadourian says she improvises with materials close at hand and that her Seat Assignment project consists of photographs, video, and digital images all made while in flight – and all with nothing more than a camera phone.

“The project began spontaneously on a flight in March 2010 and is ongoing. At present, over 2500 photographs and video, made on more than 70 different flights to date, constitute the raw material of the project.”

For the photographs in the Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style portion of the project, she says:

While in the lavatory on a domestic flight in March 2010, I spontaneously put a tissue paper toilet cover seat cover over my head and took a picture in the mirror using my cellphone. The image evoked 15th-century Flemish portraiture. I decided to add more images made in this mode and planned to take advantage of a long-haul flight from San Francisco to Auckland, guessing that there were likely to be long periods of time when no one was using the lavatory on the 14-hour flight.

Here’s a sample of what she came up with.

Katchadourian’s Seat Assignment exhibit is on view from April 14 through May 26, 2012 at the Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco.Find more here.

Or at least stop and look at some incredibly real-looking photographs of flowers from the “Les Fleurs Photographic Collection,” by Georgia artist Barry Taratoot.

To photograph the plants, Taratoot placed them against solid-black backgrounds and “without trickery or modern technical manipulation,” somehow made the plants look like paintings. But they’re not.

Go see for yourself. The exhibit is on display in the ATL Airport Atrium through May 16, 2012.