Steven Siegel
Biography, Sections 32B – 91
Mixed media
2008 – 2013
The observation of Biography requires a journey from one end to the distant other. While we travel over time, the work travels with us. Thickets of common materials such as yarn, plastic utensils, beads, newspapers and pipe cleaners are densely packed into singular compositions that were made one at a time, in a sequence that evolves both visually and materially from the right side of the wall to the left. The artist began this epic work with no intended conclusion, and over a five year development its forms and motifs can be seen to circle back to their ancestors. The concerns embedded in Biography have much to do with echoes of geologic time and the forces that shift landforms into oceans
and one species into another, yet it also resonates deeply with the sustained creative work that necessarily defines a human life.
Concourse A
Photos by Arthur Evans
Robert Hite
Migration House
Reclaimed wood and metal
2007-2017
“In my youth, I would return at dusk from my forays along winding back roads, murky swamps and thick forest. I could then incubate my amazement at what exists in this life from the safety and sanctity of my home.”
We all seek that elusive dwelling place called home: a shelter that can provide refuge for dreams and aspirations as well as protection from the elements. Migration House reflects that longing for stability, along with the fragile impermanence that often accompanies the pursuit of home. Robert Hite carefully constructs his sculptures out of found and collected materials, and photographs them in various locations around the Hudson Valley. His rural southern upbringing and travels around the developing world inform his approach to architecture as a functional but poetic compilation of disparate available parts. The sculptures and lyrical, atmospheric photographs echo with the harsh necessities of poverty and transience, but also with resiliency and resourcefulness. Implied too in these rambling clusters and sharp-peaked towers is the habitation of a community, and the efforts of a collective to resist dissolution, the ravages of time and nature, rising together above the fray.
Concourse A
Adam Frelin
Air Space
Digital direct-to-substrate print on PVC sheet
2021
Adam Frelin’s work crosses disciplines of sculpture, photography, video, and performance, and is often occupied with surprising junctures between our built and natural worlds. This sort of optical fiction is also at the center of this large-scale, site-specific project, Air Space. After visiting Albany International Airport’s Air Traffic Control Tower and observing how air space is managed, Frelin enlisted the help of Mike Murray, a local pilot who flew him over the Airport to photograph the view over Concourse B. In doing so, anyone viewing this installation is replicating the flight path that the photographs were taken along, allowing the exact view from 2500’ above to be seen from within the Airport. The installation brings together two vantage points: a view of the ground from a plane in flight, and a view of a plane in flight from the ground.
The artist and Albany International Airport wish to thank Mike Murray, who piloted the aircraft from which the artist was able to capture these aerial photographs. Thanks also to Albany International Airport’s Air Traffic Manager, Daniel Pemrick, for his time and expertise.
Concourse B
Susie Brandt
After Polly Collins
Steel, acrylic beads, floral wire, chenille stems
2019
After Polly Collins is an interpretation of a gift drawing made by Shaker sister Polly Collins (1808-1884), who lived in nearby Hancock, Massachusetts. Some Shakers expressed their spiritual revelations as drawings, and deemed them ‘gifts’ from God. Although the design of their architecture, furniture and clothing was marked by sparse elegance, Shaker gift drawings could be exuberantly colorful and were kept only for occasional private display. Susie Brandt’s work is rooted in textile traditions and the vernacular arts of her Adirondack, New York home. Recent exhibitions include the International Fiber Art Fair in Seoul, South Korea, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa. She is the recipient of Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland Arts Council and a Visual Arts Grant from the Creative Capital Foundation of New York. Brandt resides in Lake Luzerne, New York, and Baltimore Maryland, where she is a professor in the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Fiber and Foundation Departments
Concourse B
Photos by Arthur Evans
Kate Hamilton
I Dream I am You
Polyester fabric, aluminum wire armature
2018
While empty of human form, this white button-down shirt gestures in a lively manner to viewers below. In her monumental sculptures of personal garments, Kate Hamilton considers how the simple structure of a piece of clothing can elicit vivid associations and memories. I Dream I am You echoes the iconic business garb of so many hurried travelers, while playfully conjuring life on a scale so different from our own.
Concourse B
Chris Victor
Untitled
Mixed media, including collected material discarded by Albany International Airport
2020
Chris Victor’s sculptures are vast assemblies of everyday materials like colorful plastic toys, utensils, game pieces, and utility cable. The artist is a devoted salvager, collecting an array of items that have been tossed aside and bound for a landfill or scrap heap. For this installation, Victor was supplied with spools of coated copper coaxial cable that were no longer in use at Albany International Airport, and invited to develop a project using that material. Through a meticulous process of selectively exposing and shaping the wire, and attaching small shards of colorful material to it, this joyful, cacophonous thicket came to life.
Concourse B
Joy Taylor
Coriolis
Digital print on vinyl
2016
Coriolis reveals a single moment in the birth of a cloud. It takes its title from the Coriolis Effect, which mathematically describes the spiral shapes of air molecules that result as the rotating earth spins, turning the atmosphere with it. As the molecules are constantly spun to the right, spirals form in the air, with small spirals growing and multiplying to fill our view. This same force is also responsible for other spiral forms found in nature, including growth patterns in plants and seashells. As travelers prepare to ascend into the ever-changing clouds, Joy Taylor offers them the chance to visualize the invisible forces at work in the sky.
Concourse B
Dean Snyder
Lubber
Red cedar, iron rings
1994
Lubber, a sphere of laminated cedar veneer punctuated by hand-wrought iron rings, sits as a sentinel to the concourse. Lubber‘s title refers to a person that is out of sync with his environment, commonly known in the nautical expression, “land-lubber,” a person not acclimated to seafaring.
Concourse B, installed 2001
George Rickey
Four Triangles Hanging
Stainless Steel
1974
George Rickey was one of the world’s foremost kinetic sculptors. His work consisted of tenuously balanced geometric steel constructions which combined linear elements and geometric forms moved by air currents and gravity. The artist’s primary interest was in the fluctuating relationships of these forms in shaping the space around them, rather than in the shapes themselves.
Rickey’s work is still represented in major museums throughout the world. Four Triangles Hanging was previously exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in 1979 and the Worcester Art Museum, in 1983. From 1960 until his death in 2002 George Rickey resided and worked in East Chatham, Columbia County, NY.
Concourse B
Albany International Airport Art & Culture Program 