Life at the Airport, Through a Different Lens

Photos by Beth Hollerich

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Blaine Siegel, sporting his self-created uniform of charcoal gray pants and a shirt that reads “AIR PIT,” headed down to baggage claim, where limo drivers hold wipe-off boards and iPads bearing the names of passengers they are picking up.

Siegel’s board had a different message: “Waitin’ here to talk with you.” On another was, “I’m here to listen to you.”

Siegel is Pittsburgh International Airport’s first artist-in-residence, and these days he is busy engaging with passengers, employees and airline staff whenever possible. The wipe-off board is his way of doing things differently.

“One of the roles of an artist is to change the everyday experience to make people look at things differently,” he explained. “If I’m standing there with a wipe-off board, and they read it, they’ll stop and think for a minute. I’m asking people to come out of their shell and talk to me. Some people will.”

PIT is one of about a dozen airports in the world that have hosted an artist in residence.

The approach allows both the artist and the airport to develop projects they couldn’t do on their own, said Sallyann Kluz, director for the Office of Public Art at the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council.

“It gives the airport team the opportunity to view the creative process as it moves forward and to view their own work through an artist’s lens,” Kluz said. “What we have seen in past residencies is that there is lasting impact on the host organizations, not only from the creative project but that the process of seeing an artist work informs changes in their own processes in a positive way.”

Finding hidden gems at the airport

Siegel’s residency spans four phases: discovery, engagement, testing and creating. In the fourth phase, he’ll announce and begin creating his final art piece.

Siegel will make that determination by immersing himself in PIT’s culture and seeing life at the airport through an entirely different lens than most.

For example, PIT maintenance personnel routinely test the machine for painting lines on the runways. Testing takes place on a designated piece of ground. To most, the testing area looks like a maze of confusion – lines zig zagging and overlapping one another without any sense of purpose.

For Siegel, seeing that testing ground was like finding a hidden gem.

“They blast paint out on this parking pad, and it changes every two or three weeks, which is just fascinating and beautiful,” he said with his trademark exuberance. “I have been photographing it non-stop, and every couple of weeks they repaint it.

“Each time I go back, it’s a completely different landscape. It’s little beautiful things like this that happen at the airport that do not get a lot of attention. I love experiencing that.”

Check out Siegel’s Instagram posts for more behind-the-scenes airport photos and a glimpse into his other discoveries.

Visit the artist’s studio at PIT

Airport visitors can check out Siegel’s studio on the Mezzanine Level of the Airside Terminal on Tuesdays and Thursdays beginning Aug. 2, where they can see an assortment of the treasures he collected during the discovery phase of his residency.