Celebrating the great musical traditions of the Carolinas and the beautiful landscapes of this region, these two artistic terrazzo floor designs extend a warm welcoming gesture to each visitor to Charlotte and beyond. These terrazzo floor designs are visual songs, musical maps for the heart, which interweave a rich visual tapestry of music, flight, regional flora & fauna, with a sense of joy, wonder, and whimsy. The floors are organized thematically along the bilateral layout of the terminal at Charlotte Douglas International Airport and relate geographically to the larger context of the earth’s diurnal cycle and sidereal time, ie. day and night.
I call these two floor designs: Carolina in the Morning, and Carolina Moon.
Carolina in the Morning is inspired by the song standard “Carolina in the Morning” with words by Gus Kahn and music by Walter Donaldson from 1922 (and used by kind permission from Kirby Shaw, copyright holder). A snippet of the lyrics is caught up in a whirlwind of time—between the echo of the shadow of the Wright brother’s plane, and the smell of honeysuckle and jasmine—lush, verdant, lyrical. The floor design contains some of the actual lyrics and musical notes—while suggesting other lyrical flights through the series of flowers, or a bluebird, and a kayak. (The kayak is from a North Carolina kayak maker). The form of the eddies suggest to me the shape of a pick guard on an acoustic guitar.
In Carolina Moon, the hands of an analog clock tracking the lunar cycle are a playful reminder for the viewer of time past and suggest one’s movements are connected to something much larger than the rush you might feel at this moment to make your next flight. The rhythmic flow of forms, from one into another, is meant to reference any of the 23 river basins in North Carolina, or a good- ol’ swimming hole. A slide trombone suggests the sounds of a traditional Charlotte shout band. The deep blues, magentas and black epoxy colors will be a rich backdrop and sprinkled with mirror, silver-coated aggregates, mother-of-pearl shell and glass glimmer like a field of stars in the sky at night.