A little bit of magic for air travelers

Originally published Saturday, March 18, 2000

By RACHEL JOY LARRIS
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Airports are places of transport. They are not communities, except for the commune of travelers. For those passing through Sea-Tac Airport, it might be their only glimpse of Seattle, even though they are actually in the city of SeaTac.

Some look for Seattle in the gift shops, others may find it in the local art placed liberally, often unobtrusively throughout the airport. Perhaps lasting impressions of the city and its region will be found in fish patterns in the floor tiles and talking water fountains that babble like brooks.

One piece of art is less subtle. Michael Fajans' "High Wire" spans 180 feet of a wall in Concourse D. Eleven painted panels of rich reds, purples, and golds depict a magician with vivid green eyes. He shows off an ancient magic trick. Three figures, the magician and his two assistants, are stunningly lifelike.

Because the art is too big to see all at once, Fajans created a piece that reads left to right or backward just as well. The trick works either way.

At one end, the panel shows a magician with an assistant putting a lady into a box. At the other end, after the hocus-pocus, the box is opened, and empty.

"I see flying as kind of incredible," said Fajans. "It's magical. We're doing something we're not supposed to be able to do."

In the life of an airport, like the magic trick, some people appear out of thin air and some people disappear into thin air.

It helped that Fajans does his own magic. He is a magician as well as an artist and performed the trick at the piece's unveiling in 1993, only substituting his son for the young lady because the secret of the illusion is a small lightweight person.

"The trick works because the person inside is strapped to the back panel," he explained. "She's hanging off the back. The trick is in the sequence of opening the panels."

The painting itself is an illusionist's trick that teases its audience into thinking that it has seen the trick performed, instead of simply painted. Perhaps this can be said of all paintings.

"Most people say to me, 'The airport let you do that? That has nothing to do with an airport,' " Fajans said.

"But the airport's only objection was that it took away a tremendous amount of leaning space."