Nashville International (BNA) and Philadelphia International (PHL) will be hosting new art exhibits this spring.
The Flying Solo exhibit at BNA opens March 15 and runs through Sept. 4. The series gives local artists the chance to exhibit their work at the airport. This spring’s exhibit includes works by Mary Addison Hackett, Todd Greene and Hans Schmitt-Matzen.
“The Arts at the Airport’s Flying Solo exhibits are a great way to introduce the airports’ passengers, partners and employees to the culture and feel of local and regional artists,” said Raul Regalado, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority. “We hope these exhibits continue to provide a great Nashville Airports Experience to our patrons.”
Greene uses acrylics, oils, mixed media, sculpture and constructions in his works. The Flying Solo exhibition will be a 20-foot by 14-foot mural on the wall of Ticketing Lobby North.
“The images in this mural are based on my great grandfather’s sermon cards,” he says. “I knew him as Paw Paw, and he preached in small Southern towns for most of his life. He never properly learned to read, so he would sketch out Biblical passages onto 4-inch by 6-inch index cards, which he secretly referred to while preaching. There are nearly 400 sermon cards in existence and more than 250 paintings based on this series.”
Hackett’s work, which will be found in Ticketing Lobby South, will be “She Grounded Her Ship and Surrendered” and “Mystic Hovercraft,” both acrylic and oil on canvas.
“I am partial to abstraction because of its intrinsic inability to illustrate, and the ensuing challenge this presents,” she says. “My objective in painting is to build some kind of meaning from the chaos of materials at hand.”
On Concourse C will be Schmitt-Matzen’s “Tangent for Loop III,” “A Mobile History” and “Garbage Pail Kids,” all acrylic serigraphs on Rives BFK paper.
“My prints are experiments in referencing gestural languages in a more restrained, conceptual way rather than as a record of attractive accidents,” he says. “I avoid producing my images with the acts normally used to achieve certain gestural effects.”
At PHL, Rick Stanley will have one of his creations on display.
He has been fascinated with clocks since he was 4 years old, when he took apart a clock for the first time, wanting to know what made it tick. Now, he and his son, Vince, design and build unusual mechanical clocks. “Beer Bottle Clock” will be the one at the airport.
The piece is 21 feet long and features 300 recycled Yuengling lager bottles that function as the clock’s gear teeth. It will be on display through August in Terminal A-West.
“In recent times, the mechanical clock has almost been entirely replaced with digital clocks, which are very accurate but do not have the visual intrigue and history of the mechanical clocks,” notes Rick Stanley, who along with his son owns Stanley Clockworks near Bloomsberg, Pa. “I try to introduce the wonder of the mechanical movements. I build the clocks very large with the workings exposed and use everyday items so people can relate to these clocks and observe how they work.”
For the “Beer Bottle Clock,” Rick Stanley says “it was important to us to use materials that one does not normally associate with clocks; look at raw material, or resource, in a completely different light and use it in an unexpected way. Vince and I brainstormed and came up with the idea of using bottles for the gears. This naturally led to the idea of using recycled bottles. Another criterion was to use local materials. Yuengling is located in Pennsylvania and is America’s oldest brewery. The framework for the clock is made from oak timbers harvested locally and left natural.”
“Some mechanical clocks can be intriguing, but a 21-foot long clock with 300 beer bottles as gear teeth is incredible,” says Mark Gale, airport CEO. “The workmanship is fantastic. We are very pleased to have the opportunity to present this unusual timepiece as part of our Exhibitions Program.”
