By PAGE LEGGETT

For someone who knew next-to-nothing about Charlotte, Val Britton became an expert in a hurry.

The Portland, Oregon-based artist won the commission to create an original work for Charlotte Douglas International Airport’s new Concourse A. She had a budget of $235,289 to create “Where Earth Meets Sky,” which was recently unveiled in the concourse’s west mezzanine. (ASC manages the public art programs for the city of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.)

It’s hard to imagine a better fit for the job.

Britton, who earned a BFA in printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and an MFA from California College of the Arts (CCA), was tapped to create a permanent public artwork for the San Francisco International Airport in 2015. “Voyage” is on the Departures level between domestic Terminals 1 and 2 and was recognized as “Best In Public Art Projects” by “Americans for the Arts Public Art Network Year in Review.”

Britton’s work is also in the permanent collections of some esteemed venues – the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Cleveland Clinic Fine Art Collection, Facebook headquarters (she once served the company as artist-in-residence), the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art and more.

The Livingston, New Jersey native had never been to Charlotte until she was invited, along with other finalists, to present their qualifications. And the extent of her knowledge about the Queen City was Romare Bearden’s connection to it. (Bearden is known for his collage work, as is Britton.)

“I’m very interested in a sense of place,” she said. “I was interested in this opportunity because of the liminal space of an airport, where there are all these interconnecting trajectories and all these people on their way somewhere.”

Maps are a frequent theme of hers. Her art “uses the language of maps to create immersive, layered mixed media works that describe physical and psychological spaces,” she wrote in her application.

The fascinating – and deeply personal – reason for her love of maps is her late father’s work as a cross-country truck driver and mechanic. After his death, Britton used road maps to try to piece together parts of his life she didn’t know.  

Using maps – or map iconography – is an effective visual cue in her art. The viewer inherently understands it’s shorthand for wayfinding. And that could be literal or metaphorical.

Britton’s art deals with physical spaces – and sometimes psychological ones. “Collage, drawing, painting, printing and cutting paper have become my methods for navigating the blurry terrain of memory and imagination,” she writes.

Art based on research

Her giant, high-impact art wall (more than 48 feet wide by 16 feet high) in the Charlotte airport was inspired by aerial views, mapping, topography and research into Charlotte’s history. Symbols and shapes derived from mapping depict an imaginary, yet somehow familiar, world.

The judges were impressed with how methodical Britton is. “Her practice is very research-heavy,” said Todd Stewart, ASC’s vice president for public art. “She works abstractly, so there are many different references, inspirations and bodies of knowledge incorporated in each piece. That’s a big strength of hers.”

Britton, who calls herself an “intuitive worker,” said she approaches artmaking and research in much the same way. “There’s an exploratory artmaking side that’s about working with materials, colors and shapes; moving things around; and finding relationships within that. It’s the same with research: I sift through what’s there and see what resonates.”

Where better to research Charlotte than at UNC Charlotte’s Atkins Library?

Britton asked for – and was assigned – a student researcher to assist. Jonathan Apgar was then a senior art major at UNC Charlotte, and he helped uncover maps, aerial photographs, plans and soil surveys, which Britton said are surprisingly “interesting and beautiful; there are all these networks and layers of history.”

She’s not just interested in roadmaps. She incorporates data and markings from all kinds of maps in her work – including goldmining maps and something even less likely: wastewater sanitation maps. “They can tell you a lot about populations and what’s happening with health,” she said. She found these maps especially interesting, as she was working on this commission during a global pandemic.

Working with a student researcher is something that set Britton apart. “It’s not a typical practice,” Stewart said. “It’s another measure of the extra distance Val went to ensure this piece is really tied to Charlotte.”

Even the materials she chose reference Charlotte. She created her own reddish pigment using Charlotte clay and red brick procured from the Little Sugar Creek Greenway and surrounding area. And gold leaf is an homage to the city’s prospecting history.

A sense of place

She managed to give the static work a sense of movement “in which viewers can immerse themselves and travel through their imaginations into a complex visualization of history and landscape,” she said.

The work’s themes – interconnectedness, wonder, a sense of place – come to life through Britton’s palette of strong blues and gilded accents. She found a fabricator – Magnolia Editions in Oakland, California – to help bring the vision to life. Magnolia prepped 60, half-inch thick plywood panels with gold gesso.

“I had never worked with them before, and they were fantastic,” Britton said. “They do traditional printmaking, papermaking, digital printing, Jacquard weaving. The tactility, color and beauty of the panels they created for the Charlotte airport really exceeded my expectations.”

After she created the artwork as a large-scale collage, she photographed it in “super-high resolution,” she said. Then, Magnolia digitally printed on the primed wood.

“It’s actually a UV-cured digital printing, and the color and detail are incredible,” she said. “It’s so high-res, you can actually see shadows of the collage material, which makes it feel like a real collage rather than something printed. Collage is a medium I love working with, because you can integrate and marry a lot of different materials and create a unified piece that’s layered, rich and deep.”

Her meticulous placemaking leads to something special for viewers – “the people who work there and those just passing through,” she said. She aims for something “that surprises them or gets them to think about where they are in a new way.”

Stewart, who was on-site during the five-day installation, is happy with the outcome – and with the process that led to it.

“It’s always a privilege to work with artists who learn as much as they can about our city and the specific place they’re designing for,” he said. But Britton took it to the next level. “She learned so much about the land the airport sits on. She visited several times and took an enormous amount of inspiration for the piece she created.”

“Where Earth Meets Sky” left an outsized impression on Stewart. “We do many, many projects, and I’ve seen many different types of work,” he said. “But what Val and her fabricator accomplished is extraordinary. It really looks like a handmade collage made on a grand scale. I think anyone who comes into that concourse will be hard-pressed not to take notice.”

Follow Val Britton at Instagram.com/ValBritton/.