Art on the fly

Hartsfield Airport is home to museum-quality art, but does anybody notice?

Bill Armstrong has traveled countless times in and out of Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport for most of his 30 years in Atlanta. On this blustery Sunday from a row of conjoined black leather chairs, he gazes toward a bleary and rain-drenched tarmac from behind the air-condition-chilled windows of gate E-10. He’s startled but happy to oblige an answer when asked if he’s noticed all the art around him. “No,” he says.

Nestled under the arched skylights are 16 bright, multicolored paintings by Asheville, N.C., artist Virginia Derryberry that Armstrong has to crane his neck to see for the first time in his numerous visits to concourse E.

“This airport’s always been efficient with handling people, but it’s ugly as sin,” he says. “Public environments are either overwhelming or sterile, and when you look down the hallway of concourse E, it looks dark and featureless, like something from Kafka.”

Among the travelers polled on Sunday, Armstrong’s pessimistic reaction to Hartsfield’s aesthetics was unanimous. As a city, Atlanta seems torn between style and function, and when it comes to public spaces, we are hard to please. It’s not surprising for a city afflicted by a unique schizophrenia that clings to the pride of being a center of commerce and a transportation megalopolis but sometimes hides its Southern charm and history behind the desire for international celebrity. Atlanta is fixated on the destination, not the journey, but there’s little that’s distinctly Southern or charming about being in a big damn hurry all the time. This hustle makes the airport a blameless metaphor for the city.

Now officially the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield International also showcases some of the city’s most impressive public art, even though most travelers dart past it and sit for hours beneath it without a second’s worth of recognition. airport art program managers David Vogt and Lamar Renford, both artists and former city art administrators, initiated the airport art program in 1994 in International Concourse E. The 1.2 million-square-foot area was built with the design criteria to make the airport more “human, warm and user-friendly” by incorporating soft natural and artificial light, sloping angles and more than 70 site-specific, mixed-media art installations. Concourse E is the jewel in the crown of Atlanta’s foray into airport art, and Vogt says E’s success has led to the ongoing expansion of more installations throughout the rest of the airport, one of which includes an upcoming exhibition of contemporary art from Zimbabwe.

A brochure describes the aesthetic criteria that guided the selection of art installations along international concourse E as “enabling travelers from abroad to begin to develop a fuller appreciation for that elusive cultural context known as the American South.” But what seems most elusive about Atlanta’s artistic representation at Hartsfield is the discrepancy between the intriguing promises of the program and the general ambivalence and suspicion about public art.

“Adults don’t give a shit about art,” says David Clark who’s up from Cochran, Ga. to meet an international flight. Clark says he appreciates the airport art program’s efforts but theorizes that everything in Atlanta follows a duplicitous money trail: “These programs just make the corporate, high-toned people feel politically correct.”

But, if taken the time to look, the art does succeed in capturing poignant, disparate images of Southern culture. Radcliffe Bailey’s colossal mixed-media painting, “Saints,” poised above the escalators on the transportation level, is stunning. But it’s difficult to be adequately stunned when sliding down moving staircases en route to the train that takes you to the car that speeds you away from the international airplane ride.

Within the concourse, though, it’s worth slowing down for some of the commissioned installations. Joni Mabe’s “Southern Icons of the 20th Century” at gate E-30 memorializes Southern kitsch with tire clad images of Martin Luther King Jr., Patsy Cline and Jackie Robinson in a hollowed-out bed frame. With its flower garlands, garden hoses and lawn ornaments strewn about the railings and ceiling, it makes the waiting area look like a bricolage of Southern juju.

Gate E-9 displays the results of Lynn Linnemeier and Shelia Turner’s extensive road trips into the South to document the significance and history of juke. The installation features a painting of Robert Johnson at the 75/85 crossroads as well as memorabilia such as doors, posters, and vinyl albums from existing juke joints. Renford and Vogt say they’re planning to add an audio element that will include blues and other music from traditional roadside haunts.

Charles David Hubbard created four fantasy flying machines for his first public art commission, which features miniaturized airplane-like crafts made from recycled materials such as aerosol and tuna cans and typewriter parts. His masterworks of resource and engineering are showcased and suspended over gate E-18.

Hubbard says the passersby who don’t notice the airport art are indicative of how little the city values a slower, pedestrian lifestyle. “Atlanta’s going to have trouble defining itself as an art-conscious city because our environment doesn’t allow for it. It’s the whole congestion of the city makeup. When you’re in a car, you’re looking for the parking deck. It’s a big melee, and it’s impossible to see and appreciate art and architecture.”

But Vogt has faith that Hartsfield’s collection can stand up to its environment, even if more than a few patrons pass by unawares. “Art is about slowing down and opening the mind and heart to other things,” says Vogt. “Being in the airport produces stress among people, so I think a lot of folks don’t pay attention, and I think there are a lot of people who wouldn’t appreciate it even if they did look at it.” But Vogt says just having art at the airport, even if only for one glance, can subliminally influence the mind.

Atlanta’s history in the airport art business is characterized by false starts and badly received good intentions. The first program was launched in 1977, three years before the airport’s new terminal opened in 1980, with a price tag of $450,000 — it now averages $1.1 million a year, derived from a percentage of airport revenue. This first attempt at airport art was criticized for being too conceptual, and once the commissioned pieces were in place, there was no staff to expand and maintain the program.

Hartsfield’s building also got off to a shaky aesthetic start when the new terminal opened in 1980. It was criticized for being a sterile, flavorless place but was a monument to utility as one of the only Atlanta transit patterns laid out in a usable grid system. A New York Times writer said of the new terminal: “It is hard not to get over the sense that one is caught in a huge machine, something like a great Xerox machine.”

Vogt and Renford had these complaints in mind when they festooned the new concourse E for its 1994 debut. They deliberately sought out pieces that would represent a more accessible style, and their selection panels, whose criteria was quite competitive, were comprised of about 11 community members: writers, artists, activists, curators, arts and arts administrators.

“This program’s goal is to showcase Atlanta and the South, and it underscores Atlanta and the airport’s significance in a world community,” Vogt says. “It’s the first place people have an impression of Atlanta and the South.”

So, if Atlantans are too busy multi-tasking to appreciate public art, it makes sense to give exposure to Southern artists at the one place that truly defines our civic spirit. More people will pass by the artwork at Hartsfield than visit all our galleries combined. With this in mind, a little neck-craning probably won’t hurt when we’re talking about some desperately needed Southern context.