Giant bird heading to D.M. airport
It's a bird ... it's a plane ... no, wait — it really is a bird!
A humongous aluminum goldfinch has been cleared for takeoff at the Des Moines International Airport. The design for the sculpture, which will hang above the baggage-claim area, was unveiled Saturday at a Metro Arts Alliance gala at the West Des Moines Marriott hotel.
The artist Bounnak Thammavong of Swisher, Ia., hatched the idea after MAA sent out a call for proposals to help celebrate its 40th anniversary.
"I wanted that 'wow' factor," Executive Director Kim Poam-Logan said. "I wanted people to know there was something new and different."
So Thammavong — working with his wife, Stephanie Sailer, and friend Michael Sneller of nearby Cedar Rapids — drafted plans for an aluminum version of Iowa's official state bird that spreads its wings up to 16 feet across and weighs up to 800 pounds.
They'll build it over the next couple of months and then nest it temporarily in the middle of the Des Moines Arts Festival, where the public can help paint it. Visitors will also help make hundreds of smaller kitelike birds out of repurposed materials — vinyl banners, cardboard and such — which will eventually trail the big bird like the plume of a jet trail.
The project's recycled and collaborative elements helped Thammavong win the commission over 20 other Iowa artists. The bird narrowly edged out proposals for a mural by Chris Vance of Bondurant and a giant paper-airplane sculpture by Rebecca Ekstrand of Des Moines.
"Bounnak hit every single point in the proposal," said Des Moines Arts Festival Executive Director Stephen King, who served on the five-member jury. "His project really nailed it. There's an opportunity for literally hundreds of people to contribute."
According to the planned timeline, those contributors will be able to see their handiwork at the airport starting in August, when the artist and his crew will hang the sculpture from the ceiling. An official dedication ceremony is planned for Oct. 16.
The installation may pose a logistical challenge, Thammavong said, but nothing he can't figure out. He strung 2,000 pounds of sculptural walleyes over a stairwell at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and built another big fish into a stainless steel arch over the Trout Run Trail in Decorah.
Another pair of his fish — one shiny, one rusty — swim on pedestals behind the Urbandale Public Library. His other public artwork can be seen throughout eastern Iowa, but the Des Moines airport commission will be his most prominent so far. The site served 2.3 million passengers in 2014, the third year in a row to top 2 million.
Thammavong himself is one of those passengers. He emigrated to Iowa as a third-grader but flies every couple of years back to his native Laos.
He's taken notice of the goldfinches that flit around his home in the southern suburban outskirts of Cedar Rapids.
"I'm not an ornithologist. I'm not going to count their toes and feathers," he said, "but I'm watching them now. I want to catch the shape of them and the way they hold their wings."
Metro Arts Alliance AWE Awards
The plans for the new airport sculpture were unveiled during a Metro Arts Alliance gala to celebrate its 40th anniversary and honor three winners of the nonprofit group's second annual Art Within Everything (AWE) Awards. This year's recipients are:
• Ankeny artist Stewart Buck "for instilling a legacy of art appreciation and engagement" in Bondurant, where he taught art for many years at the high school.
• Businessman Chad Cox for his service as chairman of the Des Moines Social Club during its move to its current home in a renovated fire station.
• Business Publications Corp. for promoting local artists, musicians and culinary tastemakers.
Metro Arts Alliance is best known for organizing Jazz in July and various year-round educational programs that send artists and musicians to area schools.