LaGuardia Airport is continuing its partnership with the Queens Council on the Arts, offering five Queens-based artists the opportunity to showcase their work in the historic Marine Air Terminal (also known as Terminal A, which serves JetBlue).
The second year of the program, known as QCA ArtPort, will allow each artist to spend a three-month period in residency, where they will hold regular open studio hours and invite travelers to view and discuss their work. Artists receive a $6,500 stipend from LaGuardia and QCA for art supplies and materials, and will utilize the 110-square-foot studio in the Marine Air Terminal’s art deco rotunda.
“The passengers who experienced the first year of ArtPort provided extremely positive feedback, and we’re delighted to continue this distinctive program for another year,” said LaGuardia General Manager Lysa Scully. “It’s a fun and unique way to enhance the travel experience, with passengers and airport employees alike able to immerse themselves in art from the local Queens community.”
“By showcasing Queens artists in such a dynamic public setting, the ArtPort Residency celebrates the rich arts and culture tradition we have in this borough," said QCA Executive Director Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer.
Over the next year, passengers arriving or departing there will be greeted with a piece of live performance art. The 2019-20 artistic class consists of local talents Holger Keifel, Linda Ganjian, Davi Leventhal, Natsuki Takauji and Haksul Lee.
Keifel is first up, featuring portraits taken of travelers passing through the terminal, with a short interview to collect their travel experiences. Subsequent exhibits will focus on creating fuxicos, a traditional Brazilian decoration made from fabric scraps (Leventhal); the design and printing of original postcards with illustrations of LGA and Queens landmarks (Ganjian), and an airplane sculpture consisting of white and blue planes, mirror images with visitors’ names written in their own language (Takauji and Lee).
Year One of the ArtPort project attracted significant attention from a variety of national, industry and regional news outlets, including the New York Times, Times-Ledger, Lonely Planet, Architects Newspaper and NY1. The artists in the first group were Gideon Jacobs, Lexie Smith, Sandra Lopez-Monsalve, Sherwin Banfield and Brian Soliwoda.
As an innovative and expressive means of improving the customer experience, ArtPort is part of the Port Authority’s commitment to enhanced customer services at LaGuardia and other agency facilities, as the Port Authority continues to transform LaGuardia into a world-class facility. These include availability of free, high-speed WiFi at the airports, real-time tracking of taxi and TSA security lines, new mobile apps and services and updated bathroom facilities.
For more on the QCA ArtPort Residency Program, go to: https://www.queenscouncilarts.org/2018-qca-artport-artists-in-residence.
