Visions for flight: The new world-class public art in Terminal 1

The San Diego International Airport‘s new Terminal 1 will be a marvel of traveling efficiency, and there’s also plenty of original art to marvel at on your way to the gate.

The new terminal, which opens to the public on the evening of Sept. 22, features six large pieces of commissioned art funded by a $10 million program.

Tiffany Beres, manager of arts for the airport, said having world-class public art in a gateway to the city is important to establishing San Diego’s identity.

“We want to celebrate the San Diego region, and each an every one of these artworks has some element of the area’s heritage, culture or artistic identity,” she said. “These are all world renowned artists. It’s something for the entire region to be proud of.”

The first two pieces that most travelers will see are a combination of art and complex structural engineering.

“RISE” by Boston-based artist Matthew Mazzotta is a giant jellyfish that floats upward beside the new arrivals roadway. Mazzotta modeled it after the purple striped jellyfish commonly found off San Diego, but chose a final color that blends in the hue of a coastal sunset.

Mazzotta said he picked the jellyfish after a conversation with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography about local biology. The giant steel and polycarbonate structure is meant to evoke local wildlife while hinting at the future impact of climate change on a coastal airport.

“We have to keep our eye on climate change, sustainability and sea level rise,” he said during a tour for journalists. “Let’s prevent this from happening, but maybe one day a jellyfish could be in the same location.”

Beneath the sculpture is small a stage for musical performances. And at night, the jellyfish glows warmly from within.

An even larger sculpture is located beside the departures roadway. “Migrations” by Walter Hood, an Oakland-based artist, consists of metaphorical birds, one towering 40 feet and the other 20 feet.

Made of steel, chain-link fence and hou-sugi ban wood, the birds are symbols of freedom, escape and migration, inspired in part by stories from the era of slavery in the United States. The birds’ eyes are made up of images of birds, insects and airplanes drawn by San Diego children.

“Where I am artistically now is using conceptional art to talk about social issues,” said Hood, a professor at UC Berkeley and 2019 MacArthur Fellow.

He said the underlying meanings in “Migrations” may not be readily apparent, but “when people com back they’ll start finding things.”

A combination of art and architecture is the “Luminous Wave Façade,” the 800-foot-long curved glass and metal main wall of the new terminal’s ticketing hall. New York-based artist and architect James Carpenter drew inspiration from the wave-tossed Pacific Ocean off San Diego. He sought to use light, shadow, transparency and reflection to evoke the threshold between water and sky — while shielding travelers from intense southwestern sunlight.

The design creates a “ripple pattern” on the outside, so that for entering travelers, “you’re sort of passing through the waves and entering the space,” said Carpenter.

As travelers move through the terminal to security screening, they’ll walk under shimmering golden “Torrey Pines” by Los Angeles artist Nova Jiang. The sculpture consists of three suspended trees with wind-sculpted canopies like those San Diegans see on the coast. The trees are formed from from 927 panels suspended by 331 cables, creating a complicated, interlocking form that catches and reflects light.

After completing security screening, travelers will emerge through “A Day in the Sun,” a row of six wide columns covered with colorful glass mosaics. San Francisco artist Amy Ellingson‘s designs evoke ocean, shore and sky as seen between coastal piers. The mosaics continue onto the floor, with colorful tiles placed in the terrazzo to suggest a sandy beach.

Light figures in a final new commissioned work, “Vessel of Light” by Austrian-born, New York-based artist Erwin Redl. Mounted above the food hall, 104 custom-designed LED light fixtures respond to both ambient noise and performances on the stage below. The artwork pays homage to triangular shapes in the famous basketry of the Luiseno, Cahuilla, Cupeno, Kumeyaay, and Northern Diegueño tribes of the San Diego region.

Two pieces of art have been saved from the old terminal and will be on permanent display. One dates back to the opening in 1966. It’s “Sandcast” by San Diego artist Charles Faust, a sculpture depicting the history of aviation in San Diego, with relief images of a B-24 Liberator, an Atlas missile, the Spirit of St. Louis and more.

The other is “Time Interwoven” by San Diego artist Christie Beniston that was installed in 2009. This piece uses LED lights in a woven pattern to represent lines of latitude and longitude with San Diego’s location marked in red. City names engraved on the frame mark time passing across the world, as light signals the start of the workday in each zone.