Air Traffic

This is my latest travel-themed commission.  Grid-based collages that are reminiscent of patchwork quilts is not a new territory for me — but I rarely source magazines for my collages.  For this piece I started with a stack of airline and travel magazines.   Then came the cutting out of hundreds of airplanes.  Finally, they needed to be layered, cut, and reassembled.  How many different airlines can you identify in this piece?

What Time is Your Flight?

 A new commissioned piece for a couple of travel buffs who are collectors of airline ephemera.  They spared some of their old airline timetables and allowed me to cut them up to create this collage.  While I have a long history of travel-themed art and this is one of my familiar quilt-inspired patterns — this is my first time working with schedules and timetables.

The Escape Series

The rains back, staying inside and it’s time for a new series (20 pieces) of mail art.  This is the Escape Series, done on the backsides of recycled airline safety cards – many from now-defunct airlines.  It’s all about escaping the cold, the winter, or just plain (or plane) getting away.  Receiving a piece of exotic mail in your mailbox might be the next best thing to traveling somewhere exotic yourself.

An Homage Lost Luggage

Homage to Lost Luggage, mixed media, vintage luggage tags, on canvas, 10”x10”

This is the sort of thing that can happen when you buy 50 unused, airline luggage tags at a vintage paper fair.  

The Impatient Passengers

The Impatient Passengers, mixed media on canvas, 10"x10”

It never fails to amuse me the way as soon as the plane lands, some passengers feel they have to whip out their phones and call someone, anyone, to announce that they have landed. If you didn’t know better, you might think some dignitary has landed for a state visit. And then we get to the gate. The plane doors are still closed, yet so many leap up, struggle to yank down their luggage and stand in the aisle waiting, and waiting, and waiting. On my most recent flight there was a problem with the jetway at our gate at LAX. The plane was early but all the passengers had to wait an extra 20 minutes. They all remained standing. And this is why I prefer a window seat and just read my book.