TWA Flight Center

Burden III 1975 enjoying breakfast at SFO airport with Burden Jr. and Sr.

This building served as my gateway to NY as a child of 12.  It was like nothing I had ever seen, architecture that transcends expected constraints of structural form.  In this space, weight was not carried, it flew.  There were no posts or walls, just surfaces endlessly curving.  The building was a set of soaring, open wings.  The place inspired those who passed through to fly themselves.  It remains a pinnacle of midcentury, jet-age design whose magic endures past the usefulness of a small terminal at a global hub airport.  And so, shut down after a life of inspired utility, the Flight Center sought to reinvent around the joy of art and design.  In recent years it was restored and re-imagined, like me and my own art.   

Forty four years later I returned to reflect on the ramifications on my life of being brought to NY.  While unexpected, uninvited and in the early years punishing, the move nonetheless gave me the opportunity to find my way as an artist by accepting what this vibrant and ultimately forgiving city offered.  NY is welcoming, once you get past the bluster.  Again just off a flight from my native West, I had breakfast while the rising sun painted the vaulted volumes, bringing life and awakening memories of the last time I was there.  But it was not the same as 1975, and neither was I.  Each in our own way was restored and with new purpose.  I found my views and spent the day sketching for this drawing series.

JFK Tower sketched while enjoying breakfast TWA 2019

painting of JFK Term. 4 for SOM Arch., 2001 with TWA Term. beyond