Oh, I'm a bundle of contradictions! After whining about sky clutter the other day in this topic, this morning I ran across this article in the New York Times and LIKE IT.
New York Times
October 24, 2004
DIRECTIONS | FEAT
'Scuse Me While I Paint the Sky
When the San Diego Museum of Art commissioned a work last year from Cai Guo-Qiang, the New-York based artist whose specialty is making art from the explosions of copious amounts of fireworks, everyone assumed he would produce something out of the ordinary. But it's unlikely that anyone was expecting this: a 1,000-foot-tall skyscraper of a work called "Painting Chinese Landscape Painting," which was created on Oct. 16 during the annual air show at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station near San Diego. Here's how Mr. Cai painted on the air.
STEP ONE Mr. Cai had the idea of an airborne artwork when he learned of the proximity of the air show to the museum. "Inserting a peaceful artwork in between fleets of military planes, zooming by in shows of might," he said, "was a fantastic opportunity." It also helped that the museum's executive director at the time, Heath Fox, was a recently retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel. Returning to New York after paying a visit to the site, Mr. Cai made two computer renderings: a nighttime work in which planes with fireworks attached would create an image of birds flapping their wings, and a daytime image of mountains and a waterfall (larger picture above). The daytime work, which cost less, was chosen.
STEP TWO Mr. Fox, using his Marine Corps contacts, put Mr. Cai in contact with the Lima Lima Flight Team, a civilian aerial acrobatic group based in Illinois that had skywriting, if not sky-painting, experience and agreed to reduce its usual fee for the occasion. Mr. Cai sent them his rendering and described the sequence he envisioned: two planes drawing mountains, to the left and right, followed by four planes zooming down the middle and then to either side, to create a waterfall and stream. E-mail messages flowed between Mr. Cai, the aerial team and Mr. Fox as Mr. Cai communicated the light, almost whimsical feeling he wanted the work to have.
STEP THREE The Lima Lima team rehearsed twice over the summer, during down time at air shows in Wisconsin and Tennessee. Videotapes and photographs of the rehearsals were sent to Mr. Cai in New York; at his request, the number of smoke nozzles on the planes was doubled and a denser smoke mixture was used, to make the smoke darker and to keep it from dissipating too quickly.
STEP FOUR The painting was scheduled for Oct. 15, but a fatal crash by another performer minutes before the Lima Lima team was to take off delayed it for a day. So that afternoon the flight team and Mr. Cai drove 45 minutes into the desert for a test run - the first time Mr. Cai had seen the work performed. Seeing the work live, rather than on tape or in a computer rendering, allowed him and the pilots to work out issues like how far from the audience the flight should take place to create the best viewing angle (one mile, as it turned out).
STEP FIVE Two flights, using the Lima Lima team's vintage Beech T-34 Mentor propeller training planes, went off without a hitch. But not everything could be planned for. On Oct. 15, the sky had been a perfect blue; on Oct. 16, the clouds were heavy and the sun did not burn them off. It was too late to change the mixture to make the smoke darker. "Painting Chinese Landscape Painting," meant to be white against a blue sky, ended up gray against a white sky (small picture above) - more of an ink wash effect, Mr. Cai decided, and he pronounced himself satisfied with result.
an image from the link above
another image from that link
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