History of Flight

Flights of Fancy

The inspiration for this work came from a magazine pictorial about a sculpture of organ pipes in a Swedish forest. When the wind blew, a sound resonated in the pipes. The grey strips in the piece are representative of these organ pipes and are used as a backdrop to hold pictures of Da Vinci and early explorers and aviators. The repetition of Wright Brothers flight pictures at the right and a model of the first airplane below the symbolic pipes show man’s use of the air to leave the earth.

Travel Light But Travel Wright

The Wright brothers, Orville (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were American inventors and aviation pioneers who invented and built the world’s first successful airplane and made the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. In this construction, a repetitive picture of colored clouds is used to cover the box. A model of the early Wright brothers’ airplane from the artist’s childhood, bird pictures, a photograph of the first flight and Michaelangelo’s Hand of God are assembled inside the box.

Apothecaries of the Air

The title of this work refers to the jars used to house sepia photographs
of Orville and Wilber Wright. Constructed in the form of a cross, the assemblage uses color pictures of clouds to frame a bird in flight and four identical pictures of an early Wright biplane. US air mail postage stamps are added at the lower left of each biplane picture.

Untitled

Charles Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974), nicknamed Lucky Lindy, was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist. While a 25-year-old U.S. Air Mail pilot, Lindbergh emerged suddenly from obscurity to instant world fame after his Orteig Prize-winning solo non-stop flight on May 20–21, 1927 from Roosevelt Field, Long Island to Le Bourget Field, Paris. Lindbergh made this flight in his single-seat, single-engine purpose-built Ryan monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis. This work is framed by repetitive pictures of the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk flight, a picture of Lindbergh above songbirds with a target background and a picture of the heavens below.

Lighter than Air

A zeppelin is a type of rigid airship patented in Germany in 1895. Zeppelins were first flown commercially in 1910. Their heyday was during the 1930s when the airships Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg made regular transatlantic flights from Germany to North America and Brazil. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937, along with political and economic issues, hastened their demise. The box used in this construction acts as a theater of the clouds. It opens to show cutouts of famous people in the field of aviation – Baron von Richthofen, Admiral Richard Byrd, Charles Lindbergh and the Wright brothers – and a zeppelin mooring mast. A plastic zeppelin model drifts over the work.

Amelia Earhart the Avatrix’s Temple

Amelia Mary Earhart (July 24, 1897 – disappeared July 2, 1937) was an American aviation pioneer and author. Earhart was the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. During an attempt to make a flight around the world in 1937, Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean. In this work a temple of stars is created to house the famous aviatrix. The lower portion of the piece is enclosed with plexiglass and small balls with stars attached fill the chamber. Raised astrological signs form the backdrop. Small propellers help frame a picture of Earhart against a backdrop of stars in the heavens.

Space Flight

Spaceflight is flight into or through outer space. The first rocket to reach space at an altitude of 189 km was a German V-2 in June 1944. In October 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 which became the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. The first human spaceflight was Vostok 1 in April 1961 aboard which Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made one orbit around the Earth. A box modeled after those of Joseph Cornell is used to dramatic effect in this space exploration tribute. Neil Armstrong as a young boy on a horse is the center of attraction framed by pictures of him in a space suit and the moon at the top.

Neil Armstrong Even Then He Knew

Neil Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and the first person to walk on the moon. He made his first space flight as command pilot of Gemini 8, in 1966 becoming NASA’s first civilian astronaut to fly in space. On this mission, he performed the first docking of two spacecraft. Armstrong’s second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969. This construction includes Neil Armstrong as a child and plastic toy rings signifying orbital flight with his footprints on the moon. A facing picture of the science fiction writer, Jules Verne, is framed by a background of the moon, clouds and astrological pictures of the stars.

The Moon and Space Walking

Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first humans on the moon on July 20, 1969. The first American spacewalk was performed in June 1965. This construction highlights John Glenn’s first three orbits around Earth and Edward White’s space walk with a line denoting a time lapse to the Manned Space Station. Several pictures of Earth revolving around the sun are used for visual cohesiveness.