The Sky Beneath Our Feet by Clayton Merrell

About Pgh Murals
Spreadsheet of Pittsburgh Public Art and blog archives
Map of Pittsburgh Public Art

Covering almost an acre and a half, this artwork is the largest piece of public art in the Pittsburgh area. When the original flooring at Pittsburgh International Airport needed to be replaced the Airport Authority decided to commission an artist to design the new one. So... instead of your average, bland, tile flooring we now have approx 69,000 sq feet of functional art!

I was fortunate to attend an art tour of the airport where Mr Merrell gave a talk about this project and the process involved. Most of this is written from notes I took during that talk, and observations made while I explored the installation.

The design incorporates five silhouetted images of local neighborhoods with landmarks. The artist included places that would be readily recognized: The Carrie Furnaces , Monongahela Incline, Smithfield St Bridge, the sports stadiums, Cathedral of Learning, Phipp's Greenhouse. Those silhouettes are positioned at the perimeter (by the entrances to the different concourses and the food court). A blue sky with scattered clouds takes up the bulk of the scene. Contrails zig and zag across the floor connecting different areas of the terminal. Several aircraft silhouettes are inlaid along the flight paths, adding interest to the scene. Looking down on the terrazzo flooring from the second floor gives you a sense of the overall design, although you still can't see the entire mural. It's a good place to watch people staring and interacting with the design.

Clayton Merrell has done a lot of paintings with the sky as the subject. Many were done from the perspective of someone lying on the ground looking up, with elements of the horizon at the perimeter of the canvas. Until The Sky Beneath Our Feet, his largest painted had been 8 x 10 feet. Extrapolating his vision to a canvas of this size required several steps.

The project started in the Spring of 2013 when Clayton Merrell was one of the three artists (out of an initial group of 10 artists) selected to pitch their ideas. His previous work was well suited to this venue, and his proposal incorporated all of the elements he liked to use - such as movement, or indications of time passing. He was fond of depicting wide open spaces framed by detail, and incorporating light, weather and astronomical events. His previous work also used lines or trajectories and he liked to explore the way these elements represent connectivity.  



Clayton Merrell explained how the arching flight paths were a reflection of the architectural lines of the terminal building and helped to tie the artwork to the structure. They also connect destinations within the terminal, flowing between shops and concourses.

 To come up with the details for the horizon, the artist spent time around the city photographing landmarks and neighborhoods. He pieced the photos together, made a digital trace of the image and converted it to a vector image before coloring it in.

The finished floor has only 13 different colors, but fine tuning those colors took a lot of trial and error. Terrazzo flooring has been used for centuries and these days includes several different materials (glass, granite, quartz and marble). Adjusting the amounts/ratios of those materials changes the floor's appearance and coloring.

After creating the design, local architects (LGA Partners) worked with the artist before the plan was turned over to the installation team (Mosites Construction and Roman Mosaic and Tile Company). They were able to place the design into a 3D model of the terminal to preview how it would look in place. The design had to be printed out full size to check for problems. To transfer the design to the floor, a stencil had to be created which was used to paint the outlines. Each color in the flooring is contained by a zinc border. Each piece of zinc was hand bent and then epoxied to the floor. Once one color was poured it had to set up for 24 hours before an adjacent color could be poured. During the process, the airport had to remain operational, so the flooring was done one section at a time in a long, slow process. Most of the troweling was done by hand and the terrazzo had to be polished with increasingly finer grit until smooth and then sealed and polished to a high shine. It took almost two years to complete the installation.

 Within the design are several aircraft including the space shuttle, the Wright brothers' first plane, and a blimp. The details for these aircraft were too small to shape with the zinc strips, so instead they were made of aluminum and precisely cut with a water jet.

Something that worried the artist from the start was how the Alexander Calder mobile Pittsburgh would display above the new flooring. The mobile is designed to move with the air currents and Mr Merrell did not want the floor to detract from the mobile. In the end the floor design complements the mobile very well. Although the design of the floor sounds busy in a written description, in reality the clouds, contrails, aircraft and silhouettes are well spaced apart and subtle. If I hadn't been told that there were 13 different colors in the flooring I would have guessed that there were only four or five. The artist said that with the changes in lighting, shadows and reflections that it seems like there are actually more colors. It does reflect every light and sign so I can see his point. I would expect that it could look different at different times of day and depending on the volume of people walking across it at any given time.

In the food court the design is a little bit different.  One of the other ideas Mr Merrell had for the floor was a topographical map of the area, and he decided to make use of that idea within the food court.

Terrazzo flooring is very durable and when cement-based it should last longer than the building.

The other interesting result of the new floor is how the people interact with it. Kids of all ages follow the lines and explore the designs. Adults stop to stare, admire, and try to identify different landmarks. It's a beautiful way to introduce visitors to Pittsburgh, and a much quieter one without the loud click-clacks of luggage wheels across grout strips.