The 'lighter' side of terrorism: Booty seized at airports on display

If you tried to carry it through airport security in California after 9/11, it could be his now, either locked in a Plexiglas case under a heavy chain or smeared with paint and set into his resin-on-steel paintings.


		Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
	Artist Steve Maloney prepares his "Banned Booty" artwork for display starting today at the Museum of Flight. Maloney bought 270 pounds of items seized from travelers at airports with the idea of turning them into art. It features, among other things, Swiss Army knives, squirt guns and lighters.

Maloney's "Banned Booty" exhibit opens today at the Museum of Flight. Along with Swiss Army knives, it features squirt guns, cap guns, a belt buckle impersonating a gun and guns that are really lighters.

Your lighter doesn't have to look like a gun to be confiscated at the airport. Any old lighter will do. Beside an ocean of disposables, there's a silver-plated lighter shaped like a dragon and one impersonating a roulette wheel. The cell phone looks real, but not real enough to fool airport screeners. Maloney has it now, along with the lighter shaped like a woman. If you light her fire, crucial parts of her anatomy glow.

Maloney bought 270 pounds of personal items seized from travelers last year at six California airports with the idea of turning them into art.

The airport booty came cheap. He paid a little more than $1 a pound to an airport collection agency.

After that modest outlay, costs piled up. Between the resin slabs and polished steel backs, the heavy Plexiglas box, the shipping, the services of a New York public relations firm and printing of a self-published book titled "Banned Booty," Maloney estimates he has spent $20,000.

Once they'd disposed of these no-fly items, airports didn't want to see them again. None Maloney called was interested in displays of booty recycled into art. After getting the airport version of the silent treatment, Maloney is basking in applause from the Museum of Flight, the show's first stop except for a smaller exhibit at his own gallery (www.themaloneygallery.com) in Rancho Santa Fe in California.

None of his pieces is for sale. He's hoping his show, which will be at the museum through July 24, will travel and be part of a museum collection.

Asked why he smeared some of the objects with paint and decorated the edges of his cases with paint streaks, Maloney said he was inspired by the horizontal paint smears of German artist Gerhard Richter.

The resemblance isn't likely to strike anybody unless Maloney points it out, which he is happy to do.

"I'm a happy artist," he said. "My stuff is happy. I use bright colors. I don't like to look on the dark side."

What's happy about the present show?

"It's about our freedoms," he said.

"We've lost the freedom to carry this stuff, but we're holding on to the bigger freedom, being able to travel in safety. I'm happy about that."

After knives and lighters, the next most common item is scissors. There are pinking shears, garden clippers, eyebrow and nose-hair scissors, some folded to the size of a thumbnail and carried in leather cases.

Children who thought they'd break the tedium of air travel by cutting out paper dolls with brightly colored plastic scissors were mistaken.

Fingernail clippers also failed to make the cut, including one bearing the legend "I love Jesus."

In the massive Plexiglas case, wrapped in a heavy chain Maloney bought at Home Depot and hand-painted ("with my own labor") a rust color, are deer antlers, a tuning wrench for bongo drums still in its plastic case, his and her handcuffs, knitting needles, a decorative diaper pin, metal brushes, hair picks, a painted horseshoe, knives and forks, tweezers, meat thermometers and fishing hooks along with the lines and sinkers.

Weight lifters can't carry their barbells on the plane, and that includes tiny pink models suitable for a Barbie workout.

Maloney's wife claimed a couple of the scissors, and he's holding on to a few Swiss Army knives that have their owners' names on them.

"I might call them up someday and get their story," he said.

Will he return the knives?

"Maybe if they plead with me," he said.