Site Specific Installations

With its open expanses, vaulted ceilings and unique architectural features, Albany International Airport provides many opportunities for the presentation of large-scale site-specific and sculptural works. Site-specific works are those in which an artist has directly responded to the physical and environmental qualities of a particular space. The Art & Culture Program invites artists living and/or working within 75 miles of Albany, New York to submit proposals for projects that are reviewed by the Program Director and the Exhibition Committee. When a project is approved, the artist is awarded an honorarium, the Program staff work directly with the artist to realize the work, and the project is exhibited for a minimum of two years.

For more information about the Art & Culture Program's site specific installations, please call 518.242.2241 or email arts@albanyairport.com.

Current Installations

First Floor, Airline Ticketing Area

Hudson Cascade Harry Leigh Laminated white pine Installed 2008 - present As a child, Harry Leigh observed the cascading waters of Niagara Falls; as a blast furnace laborer, he guided the flow of molten iron. As a traveler, ocean waves carried him to the cathedrals of Europe, where his love of architecture met his vision of falling, coursing waters. In the early 1970's, Leigh began to experiment with the lamination and bending of wood, which yielded the first in what would become a series of 'cascade' pieces. This design and sculptural process surfaced many times throughout the years, and continue to be important features of Leigh's work.
Second Floor, Concourse B
Flying Fishes Lillian Mulero Digital print on vinyl Installed 2006 - present
A Flying Fish darts through both sea and sky in this work that transforms our view to an aquarium of great proportions. The massive silver bodies of planes and fish overlap against the blue of air and water in this visual pun meant to cleverly delight and displace.

Dream of Flight Joy Taylor 240 Hand-cut foil leaves Installed 2008 - present Cascading from within three light-filled ceiling wells are hundreds of over-sized leaves in shimmering blue, gold and green. In Dream of Flight, the artist recalls watching one autumn day as a gingko tree lost all of its leaves at once. Over the course of only a few minutes, every leaf drifted to the ground, creating a bare skeleton of branches above and a rich golden skirt on the ground below. In the midst of that shower, she observed the leaves as they seemed to relax their grip one by one, let go, slowly hover and descend. In every season, we can see leaves pulled from their branches and flung high, tossed with the wind at great distances before they find their final resting place. In Dream of Flight, each leaf is halted in its journey so that viewers can leisurely contemplate the shapes, patterns and play of light that unfold when time stands still. Travelers going toward or coming from their own mid-air suspension may be reminded that flight is wondrous both as a force of nature and a mechanical invention.

The Quest Kenneth Ragsdale Foam board and digital print Installed 2007 - present It is natural that any traveler, regardless of their immediate circumstances, should fantasize about what might lie ahead, while at the same time recalling the places they've left behind. In The Quest, Kenneth Ragsdale conjures a nostalgic portrait of the classic family voyage with his half-scale model of a 1965 Vista Cruiser station wagon towing a 1950's style travel trailer. The large-scale drawing is a two-dimensional pattern for the vehicles, which reveals their careful linear construction. An unfamiliar shape contained within that drawing is what Ragsdale describes as a 'monster,' a common entity in his work that hovers over homes, vehicles, fields and trees. This ambiguous form personifies the murky abstraction of memory and time that separates us from one another. While much of this work examines the elusiveness of memory, it is reconstructed here with razor-sharp precision. Foam-board sections, like past events, are folded in on one another, interlocking to create forms that rise up out of their flat repose and take on shapes that chronicle traveling through time.
First Floor, Concourse B

News Stand Nancy Shaver Boxes, paper, paint and Shelf Life T. Marie Time-based drawing Installed 2008 - Present Within the interior of what was until recently a bustling airport news stand, Nancy Shaver and T. Marie have constructed a sculptural environment that playfully recalls the stacks of products and 24 hour hews media familiar to travelers. Shaver, a shop owner herself, saves, collects and recycles empty food boxes of varying sizes and shapes and covers them in paper, then paints them in vibrant, saturated colors. Accumulated in stacks and arranged upon shelves, these small, bright geometric forms mingle as elements in a painting while at the same time occupying the spaces once held by best sellers, magazines, souvenirs and the daily news. Florescent lights reflect upon polished chrome and mirror surfaces, formica and corian simulations of wood and marble. Shaver sought to integrate these aspects of the space, as well as the existing lines and planes of the shelving units in her installation. The bold black and white, subtly shifting patterns in T. Marie's time-based drawing presentation Shelf-Life appear on a television monitor in a corner where travelers might once have viewed the latest in national news, advertisements and sensationalized celebrity gossip. Viewers are invited to be transfixed by the repetition of lines and shapes, and their relationship to the other elements in the installation rather than by the frenetic pace of typical television programming.

First Floor, Concourses A & B - Second Floor, Concourses A, B & C

Tree / Sonnet Project

Paul Katz
Oil and Sand on Canvas

Installed 2003 - present

William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, poems that tell of love, jealousy, youth, age, art, death and desire. Paul Katz has set himself the task of making paintings that both embody these sonnets and serve as a personal memorial to them. After a long layover one day at Albany International Airport, Katz envisioned the paintings hanging where travelers could contemplate the words and imagery while they await their departure.

Katz begins each painting by layering sand and glue over stretched canvas, elevating some areas to create a sculptural surface. After painting the entire canvas black, he writes the sonnet with red oil paint on the low-relief areas, methodically avoiding punctuation and normal line breaks. The succession of words is broken instead by the raised forms of an emerging landscape of trees and rocks. Upon reaching the end of the poem, he begins again with the first word, lending a cyclical quality to the form.

Sharon Bates, Director
Art & Culture Program
Albany International Airport Gallery hours:
7:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m. daily.
For additional information phone: 518.242.2241 or email arts@albanyairport.com