Spirogyrate

Terminal Three
SFO
Post TSA

One weekend in January 2014 the city of San Francisco and the contractors opened the new Terminal Three to the public before it went live.

I used the opportunity to capture as much public art as I could before you had to buy an airline ticket to get access to this part of the airport.

The lighting in the terminal is pretty bad.  There are big windows letting in lots of natural light, but the placement of the art made reflections, often the only thing, I was able to photograph.

This piece by Eric Staller proved to be very popular, it didn’t hurt that there was a DJ playing music for the kids to enjoy as well.

Eric Staller was commissioned by the SF Arts Commission to create a children’s play area at SFO.  These are twelve, six foot diameter, spirals that seemingly propel one another like gears. The gears are laster-cut acrylic and are motorized to move both clockwise and counter-clockwise. The spirals sit under plate glass, and motion sensors activate the spirals to not only move, but change colors as people walk over them.

Eric Staller was born in 1947 in Mineola, New York. His father’s avocation has been architecture, this inspired Staller to study architecture himself. In 1971 Staller completed a Bachelor Degree in Architecture at the University of Michigan.

 

Spirogyrate was commissioned by the SF Art Commission for $304,000.