Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.
We have been cleared to land in Kansas City.
Remember, After deplaning.
Please feel free to explore the public art in the new terminal as it is the largest public art project in Kansas City history.
Again, on behalf of the entire crew, I'd like to thank you for joining us on this trip.
Have a nice stay in Kansas City.
Flight attendants prepare the cabin for arrival ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Kansas City.
Hello, I'm Holly Hayden, an arts consultant and designer.
We may not have met.
I'm typically behind the scenes designing and planning projects around the Kansas City area, but today I get to be your host to showcase the largest public art project in Kansas City history.
Join me at the new single Terminal and parking at the Kansas City International Airport.
Let's talk about art.
Meet some of the artists and learn a little bit about the process of how we commissioned this artwork.
I can't wait for you to come on this journey with me.
Pack your bags.
Let's go.
Here behind me is a four foot by 20 foot piece, which is digital photo collage by Santiago Cucullu, and he is a professor at the Art Institute in painting.
And he actually created this piece.
It's wrapped vinyl on one solid piece of aluminum, and it's all imagery from Kansas and Missouri parks around the area throughout different times of the year and seasons to really show where we are of the place.
That was something that was so important to us as we were talking to the artists too when they're creating their art piece.
What makes it of this place when travelers arrive?
We're not in Dubai, We're not in Las Vegas.
This isn't New York.
What about the Midwest and the Kansas City area and the region really make it unique as you're waiting by gate B 57, you may recognize Hong Zhang's work.
She chose a diptych with her pieces, and from far away you'll see prairie grasses and wheat fields.
But when you get a little closer, it's actually graphite hair.
And then these are braids, hair braids made into the pattern of wheat.
And one thing I really love about this piece, not just having a flat graphite piece on paper, the edges here are actually scro And this is a 3D shadow box.
Yeah, I was thinking of applying in the tiny image of my tornado pieces.
Then I thought about, Wait a minute.
Kansas airport with a tornado.
I don't want to scare.
We will give them ease of mind, you know, relaxing.
Then I thought about, you know, the beauty of Kansas Open fields, the open space, the beautiful horizon, and the Flint Hills all that Kansas nature can give.
That's why I wanted to propose a piece that, you know, have a lasting impression, but also can be well protected for as long as you wish in the airport.
And also think about a broader audience is not like the traditional high-end space.
You know, you see at the museum or gallery.
This is for, you know, everybody.
So it will change people's stereotype of Midwest.
You know, we have a great art here.
We have a lot of things you can appreciate.
The check in hall itself is over 700 feet long.
Nick Cave's piece spans over 500 feet of that.
So within here, I maybe you just see kind of a sea of spinners, but when you look closely, there's actually icons, custom icons in these spinners of Kansas and Missouri.
So you'll see that Missouri bluebird, the turtle, Kansas catfish, there's this city of fountains fountain logo, the heart.
They're symbols of peace, unity, love.
First thing when you walk in, what are you thinking about?
You're thinking about flight.
You're thinking about up in the air.
What better piece to really encompass all that than the air up there by Nick Cave next to Gate B 60.
In Concourse B, I'm standing in front of four pieces by John Louder, and from far away you see four traditional paintings.
But when you get up close, actually each one of the four is divided into two canvases, and each one of these actually has two views.
So when you're looking up close, you see there's a vertical view and a horizontal view of the same exact location and how you know where you're at, how you're orienting yourself flight lines, sight lines like the artist has said in his artist statement, there's two lines they match up with exactly where it is.
So all four seasons are also represented and all of these photographs are of the region surrounding the Kansas City Airport.
All of them have the shadow of a plane heading towards where we're standing right now.
The contrail here goes all the way across the piece through all four, something you can think about as you're looking at the space as a whole.
You'll see a lot of natural elements.
So you'll see the terrazzo flooring, you'll look up and see a hemlock, wood ceiling, all of those different materials we gave to the artist to use as inspiration for their pieces.
So we gave them a piece of the tile.
So when you look back at the walls, that medium gray tile, those are actually five foot by ten foot porcelain tiles.
So all the artists got a sample so they could hold it next to their piece of How does my work work?
Well, with the natural materials, the natural light in the space.
And I couldn't be more excited that they really took that as a starting point for the color palette that they used.
So within the neutral palette of the the concourses and the terminal, the art stands out.
It really gives it that extra pop of color in there.
And the artist here is JT Daniels.
He's a local painter and muralist, so his take on our prompt for place was showing suburban, urban and rural people of the region something else that the artist had to think about.
Some artists were very familiar with doing art in public places that may be touched or rained on or sun getting on it or anything like that.
Other artists, this was a new thing for them.
They're used to showing in a gallery or a museum setting and we really challenged them.
How do you make your artwork long lasting and durable?
100,000 fingers touching it, Coffee splash on it.
What if there's a pen mark on it?
What's going to make it more long lasting with natural light?
So in the concourses, as you'll see from the moment you walk in the check in hall, natural light is such a huge component of this entire architectural build.
But what does that mean for artwork?
So using U.V.
resistant plexiglass, using durable paint materials, using things that may be the artist hadn't really experimented with yet in a regular gallery setting.
So JT for example, he's used to doing large scale murals in an outdoor setting.
He used that same coating that you would use in an outdoor mural on these here.
So what's going to make it durable if somebody wants to come up and touch it, that's okay.
You know whe're not saying touch the artwork or rather you didn't.
But if someone does, that's okay to.
So one thing that we've heard time and time again was what's going to happen to the artwork in the floor in the old terminal.
So one thing that was thought about right at the beginning too, was the medallions.
Everybody has memories of the medallions in the old floor.
Remember the blue terrazzo?
So so in this new terminal, they flipped the blue with the light colored pieces in it to a cream color with blue flecks in it and reused 40 medallions from the old terminal.
So this is really a nod to that nostalgia that we all remember and love from the other terminal 179 00:11:15,416 --> 00:11:17,000 So this is the concourse connector that connects Concourse B with Concourse A, So most travelers will come down this at some point throughout their travels.
So this is an area that we wanted some sort of art moment.
It's open to the airfields on both sides, so there's always something to look at, but also what's over your head.
There's something inside, outside, all around you.
So with the white straps that hang down, it creates that movement.
Just by the movement of bodies in the space.
There didn't have to be anything digital up there, anything that was actually moving itself.
The traveler creates the movement.
So what a way to get the same idea with people that are moving in a space.
Anyway, it's the connector.
Let's connect the travelers with the art when they look up, and this is such an innovative way to do it.
Well, near Gate B 54, in Concourse B, we have Rachelle Gardner Roe, her triptych entitled Flyover Country The Wild Side.
When you get up close, you realize, Oh, wait, that's not a painting.
That's not a photograph.
This is wool from her family's farm locally that she has hand felted and dyed then sewn it.
This is actually three dimensional and this is a shadow box.
All three of them are.
So when you get up close and you see all the details in this, all of them are Kansas and Missouri, local plants, animals, flora, fauna, all of it.
So a lot of times when people think of this region, they think of it as flyover country like there's nothing here.
But look at just the amazing amount of just plants and animals that are located here and what a vibrant color scheme as well.
You know, you wouldn't normally see neon colors in the animals, but such a way that the artist took all of those details and made something incredibly vibrant for the space.
Right?
These are my fingerprints of making the handmade ceramic.
Oh, there was a big fingerprint here.
So I'm like, Oh, this is a three dimensional printed vinyl on plexiglass piece.
But you may know Bernadette's work as more ceramics.
So these are photograph offs of her actual work, which another way that we challenged the artist was how do you make your work durable?
Ceramics like this are so delicate, but how do you showcase the artist's specialty in a new way and re-imagine something that can be a wall piece?
And Bernadette was really successful with the way that she created oversize she calls them Dream Clouds.
It's my very first public piece of artwork that I've ever done.
This is the biggest piece of artwork that I have ever made.
It is images of my ceramic work.
I do figurative work, portraits with glazes on tiles, and also I do florals, ceramic sculptures and figurative pieces for me to give back to Kansas City, just even a little bit of what they have given me to allow me to grow as an artist.
I am an educator at the Metropolitan Community College, and dreams do come true.
This piece is titled The Beautiful Dreams of the Places You Will Go.
This is another example of the artist really giving us her vision in that letter of interest when she sent her proposal in.
So she had a sketch of what she was imagining what her artwork could look like in more of a two dimensional space.
And that was something that was really compelling to the judges looking over all the applications.
So the more the artists can really help the selection panel understand how they can transform one type of art into another and showcase their vision, that's what really showcased in the work Near Gate B 56, talking about different mediums that the artist chose to use for their work, and also different ways to divide up that space.
The four foot by 20 feet.
The artists could divide it up however they wanted, whether or not it was a diptych, a triptych, one single piece.
This these works are by Kwanza Humphrey, and he actually made five portraits.
And these are oil paintings.
One of the cool things about it is all of these people are Kansas City, local people that are alive that we know.
So what a fun way to honor people that are so meaningful in our community.
And one of the things that we challenge the artists with as well was when we're actually showcasing and displaying the artwork.
So in a space like a public airport or a public building, there's other considerations that we have to think of that are not the same as a gallery or a studio space or a museum space, for example.
So there's things like ADA compliance.
When we're looking at how artworks hung, it's actually higher than you would normally hang it.
You would normally have your work right at eye level.
These are up high, the lowest point of any artwork is at five feet, one to give headroom for people sitting or standing here, but also ADA requirements.
Same with the depth of the pieces.
Then we're looking at the hanging method and we look up.
There's actually a hidden track right at the top of the tile and these are on hang rails and something we had to consider too was it isn't just an artwork hung on a wall.
There's locking mechanisms that are hidden back here too.
So should someone bump this, it can't come off the wall.
They also can't move it right to left either.
It's locked in there.
So the whole thing just really feels like it was a holistic approach to how the art is integrated into the architecture.
This is a triptych by Kati Toivonen, so these are digital photographs that are printed and traditionally framed, but there's a little bit of a hidden, hidden look of a faraway look, super colorful, enlivens the space.
Then when you get close up, it's called I Spy.
Carry On.
Remember those I spy books from when we were younger?
Maybe that gives away my age, but this is something the artist was really inspired by.
So this is an example of one of the art walls.
That's next to one of the gates.
So passengers will actually be queued here.
So as they're waiting, why not have an art piece that they can really explore So in the concourses, we had to really time when all the walls were finished, when the furniture was going in, making sure there was enough room for us to navigate properly.
Hang the art on the wall since it is five foot by ten foot porcelain tile.
Some of the artwork did require a little bit more than a hang rod that we saw before on some of the other artworks, So some of them actually have a hidden cleat behind there.
So that's something that gives it a little bit more stability through the tile itself.
This piece is a great example of something that we thought ahead too.
There's actually hidden outlets behind this piece on the wall, so we thought about that before any artwork was even chosen.
What if an artist wanted to do an illuminated piece?
What if they wanted to do a digital piece to something that needs power?
You don't want an extension cord running down to the floor, up in the ceiling.
So these were considerations that we thought of long before we received one artist's application.
For example, this piece, it's actually ten separate light boxes created into one piece called Nostalgia by has Hasna Sa And this is Glass.
So she used a sgraffito method, which is powdered glasses that are then scraped away and rubbed away in a technique that then you put them all in the kiln and it it kneels together.
In my line of work, I have had to sit and meditate about what exactly that space needs.
But with the airport project, it just came seamlessly to me.
It came without any barriers.
It just it just I looked at that wall and I knew exactly what I had to do because, like I said, my my parents are in another country.
I'm in another country.
And when I whenever I travel, I travel a lot for work wherever I go.
I always tell people about my place, the memories of, you know, horseback riding or skiing in Weston with my son or, you know, and I walk by in my community and I see there's a little tent and, you know, there's a mother and daughter reading to each other or there's a dad and son playing football.
Is it?
There's just so much activity and the seasons don't will hold them back.
The seasons actually create platforms for them to do different things.
So this project came from a place of absolute love.
It came from a place of civic pride, of just, you know, it's just it just came from the heart, pure and simple.
And I'm telling you this when that happens, that is the most pure and original thing that can happen to an artist and her work.
Sometimes it can be manufactured and gallery owners know this, clients know this, artists know this, that it's being forced upon.
But sometimes it just comes spontaneously, sporadically and and meticulously and and fruitful.
And I really think that this project is that I've spent one year doing this work and it really is is my absolute love that you will see in the glass panels.