Art installations soothe delays at SFO

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Just in from Sydney and headed to Costa Rica, Mariana Baltodano and her 2-year-old son, Lucas, were on a 28-hour journey that had just been extended to 32. She desperately needed to be soothed and there it was right in front of her — a 110-foot mural that would take her four hours to figure out, the estimated length of her delay.

“The artwork is energizing,” Baltodano says, surveying the full curving span of 100,000 ceramic tiles, in 60 colors, assembled by Amy Ellingson. Called “Untitled (Large Variation),” the abstract mosaic is one of six new permanent installations commissioned, purchased and installed in November by the San Francisco Arts Commission.

The art is funded by the “percent-for-art” program, which specifies that an amount equal to 2 percent of the budget for any major construction project in the city be contributed to the Civic Art Collection. The budget for expansion and renovation of Terminal 3 East (United) was $253 million, which freed up $1.7 million to decorate it with art.

Locations of the works were figured into the design, and the artists were selected by jury from hundreds of applicants nationwide. Most of the winners are Bay Area-based, though the names suggest exotic travel — Ursula von Rydingsvard, Louisiana Bendolph, Sanaz Mazinani, Vanessa Marsh and Lordy Rodriguez.

The works range from heroic sculpture to a Gee’s Bend quilt replicated in tile, but only Ellingson got this much wall space along with an entire lounge color-coordinated to her work.

“This is a massive risk that the Arts Commission was willing to take on me,” says Ellingson, who is 51 and describes herself as a “conceptual formalist.” She just sold 50 works on paper to SFMOMA but has never before done a permanent public installation, let alone one that is 1,100 square feet. “They could have hired someone who has done 10 of these or 50 of these,” she says, “but they want to showcase local artists and give them a chance.”

Airport art is not really intended for people racing through the terminal in a frenzied blur to meet a flight. Airport art, when it works, enjoys a captive audience. And few spots boast an audience more captive than at a United Airlines terminal.

People have time to kill as they await a connecting flight or wait out a delay.

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