Canopy - Anchorage International Airport Public Art Commission

Canopy Proposal

©2007 Kesler Woodward and Sheila Wyne

I am delighted to share the news that Anchorage sculptor Sheila Wyne and I have been selected to complete a major commission for the Anchorage International Airport. Canopy, which will be located in the two-story clerestory at the junction of the two main concourses in the airport, will consist of a slightly more than 16 1/2' x 36 1/2' mosaic on the angled clerestory ceiling and a 2 1/2' diameter, 10' high mosaic column.

The column, which will take the form of an abstracted birch trunk, will be visible from a distance to most travelers who have passed through security toward gates or are on their way out of the gate areas.  The ceiling, which depicts a view looking up through a birch forest toward the sky, will not be visible until travelers are almost underneath it.  Our vision is that the column will be intriguing from a distance, but might not even be recognized as a birch trunk until travelers walk beneath the clerestory and the image of the forest canopy opens above them.

Canopy study

©Kesler Woodward 2008

Sheila and I have collaborated on the image from the start.  We made a joint proposal because I was excited about the possibilities for using one of my boreal forest images in the dramatic clerestory space, and Sheila has not only produced mosaics for public spaces, but has worked with other painters to translate their work into this medium.  She looked at many examples of my paintings, and it was she who suggested looking more radically up through the forest canopy.  I have continued to work on birch forest paintings, some of which incorporate that idea, and we have been developing our specific design for this project by sending back and forth and modifying digital images via e-mail. It has been very exciting for me to collaborate with Sheila, whose artistic vision is grounded in three-dimensional art, and we've worked toward a model for the mosaic that will incorporate my fascination with painterly surface, and the boreal forest itself, with her facility for enlivening three-dimensional space and challenging the viewer. We're getting close to a collaborative digital image that will serve as a final model. 

In the course of working together over many months, we discovered that there are several outstanding studios that produce mosaics in collaboration with artists from around the world.  In late April, Sheila and Missy and I made a trip to Munich, Germany, to explore the possibility of working with Franz Mayer of Munich (http://www.mayer-of-munich.com) on the project.  We spent a week in their amazing facility in downtown Munich--6 floors, 30,000 square feet of studio space, apartments for artists who are working with them, every conceivable kind of equipment and supplies for mosaics and stained glass, and a large group of master craftspersons who love what they do. We worked with two of those master craftsmen, who over the course of the week produced about a one-meter square mockup of a section of the ceiling image at full scale, exploring with us ways of translating it from painting to mosaic.

Their talents, facilities, experience, and excitement about our project were all extraordinary.  The range of artwork we saw there, in progress or in examples from past projects with major artists around the world, was remarkable.  They are excited, and we are excited to work with them over the coming year, as they produce the mosaics in small glass tesserae, glass cakes, natural stone, and other materials.  We anticipate installation about this time next year.  I will post images and updates on the work in progress during the coming months.  

I am grateful to be working with Sheila, one of Alaska's best known contemporary artists, whose work I have long admired but whom I didn't know well before undertaking this commission. Developing this project has been in every way a partnership, and I have appreciated not only her artistic vision, but her experience with the public art process and her willingness, along with that of her longtime partner Bruce Farnsworth, to undertake so much of the ongoing logistics of the project. And I am grateful for the chance to produce a significant artwork in a striking public space that I will pass through regularly for the rest of my life.  

I am accustomed to working alone in my studio every day, even on large commissions, so this is a very different kind of artmaking experience for me. But I am happy to be involved in this large, collaborative effort, and I think that together we are going to make something wonderful.