Commission pays $160,000 for airport art

Jeff Schweers

Wednesday, June 4, 1997 | 10:33 a.m.

County commissioners may not know much about art, but they do know how much they're going to pay for it.

The board approved purchasing $160,000 worth of art Tuesday to decorate the new satellite D terminal under construction at McCarran International Airport, due to open next summer.

Mindful of the reputation of modern artists to self-destruct, the contracts each contain a sort of Van Gogh clause, in case the artist has an untimely death, loses a limb (or ear), or just plain goes nuts before finishing the job.

The open architecture of the terminal presented the opportunity to feature permanent artwork "that was representative and complementary to the Southwest and McCarran," aviation spokeswoman Nora Cooper said.

The architect, Tate and Snyder, presented more than 100 different artists from which the three pieces were selected, Cooper said.

The three works include a piece by local artist Tony Milici, whose $30,000 "Skylight Cones" is a suspended glass-and-steel sculpture to be installed at the center skylight on the passenger gate level of the new terminal's west wing.

The cones will act like a prism, Cooper said, reflecting the natural light streaming through the terminal and changing colors as the sun moves throughout the day.

Gregg Le Fevre of New York is selling his "Flight Paths" for $29,551, also to be located in the center skylight area. The work is a terrazzo floor design depicting an aeronautical map of Las Vegas, with cast aluminum airplanes aligned along the escalator median.

The largest and most complex of the three works is the $100,000 "Desert Wildlife" by David Phelps of Oklahoma City, for the grand atrium on level two of the new terminal.

The six-piece installation includes five concrete sculptures depicting a horned lizard, desert rattlesnake, scorpion, desert tortoise and bullfrog emerging from the tile floor next to a huge window overlooking the desert.

Cooper said the bullfrog may be replaced with something more representational of the desert surroundings, like a roadrunner or gila monster.

And it's art you can touch.

"It'll be fun for kids to be able to climb on them," she said.

Speaking of kids, the airport also is having murals made from the art of local 9-year-olds, who were asked to depict their favorite skyline, Cooper said. The 16 murals, measuring 9 feet by 12 feet, will be installed at the tram station to greet passengers coming from the main terminal, Cooper said.