Beyond These Points, We Are Changed

 

Relief cast glass bollards for SEA Airport

Beyond These Points, We Are Changed is a suite of relief cast glass sculptures created for two pedestrian skybridges at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Installed atop stainless steel bollards, the artworks use familiar objects such as mountain gear, lab goggles, boats, phones, cassette tapes, clocks, and lightbulbs to reflect the inner terrain of travel as much as its physical routes. The pieces invite travelers to see moments of transit as thresholds: places where we cross from one state of being into another, often quietly and without ceremony.

 

Project Overview

The project is organized into two distinct yet visually connected series: Mountains on Skybridge 3 and Rivers on Skybridge 4. Each series contains four circular, kiln-cast glass medallions. While the themes are conceptually separate, they share a common visual language of color, texture, and material, forming a cohesive world across the airport corridor.

The glass reliefs are designed to catch and transmit light, shifting in appearance as the day, weather, and movement of people change around them. As passengers pass by, arriving, departing, or moving between airport spaces, the bollards become subtle markers of passage and reflection within the flow of the terminal.

Mountains

The Mountains series is anchored by an image of Tahoma (Mount Rainier), rendered under a textured sky and moon. Along its slopes, ropes and carabiners cluster like routes and attempts, evoking the desire to ascend and the many lines of effort that converge on a single summit. Nearby, locks appear as both obstacles and guardians. They can bar access to what we want or protect what we keep close.

Lab safety goggles introduce a spirit of exploration that is curious, experimental, and wisely cautious, acknowledging that risk and preparation are always intertwined. A lightbulb set against a clock face suggests arrival and insight over time, turning the idea of a peak into something not just physical, but also temporal and internal.

Taken together, these images cast the mountain as both a regional landmark overlooking the Puget Sound area and a metaphor for effort, risk, perseverance, and the work of becoming.

Rivers

The Rivers series focuses on communication, memory, and the currents that move between people. A small canoe travels along a textured river beneath a swirling sky, echoing the sensation of being carried on actual water while also moving through less visible passages between departure and arrival, and between one version of ourselves and the next. In another piece, a lightbulb rests within a stream of bubbles, a spark of awareness suspended inside the flow. It hints at energy, presence, and the life-force that runs through water and through our shared experiences.

A rotary telephone stands in for live connection, voices reaching across distance in brief, present-tense exchanges that exist only in the moment of the call. Nearby, cassette tapes embody what is carefully recorded and replayed over time, messages as gifts of labor and love that are saved and carried forward. Together, the Rivers works treat the river as both literal and metaphorical: a moving body of water and a conduit for communication and memory that connects people and places as they travel.

Wayfinding and experience

These bollards were created for specific wayfinding zones within the airport, where passengers transition between major areas of circulation. The artworks are not signage in a literal sense, but they echo the logic of wayfinding by marking points of passage and encouraging a brief moment of orientation and pause.

By placing everyday objects in a slightly unfamiliar context, cast in glass and surrounded by shifting color and texture, the pieces ask travelers to consider both the physical and metaphorical aspects of movement: preparation, effort, connection, memory, and time. The title Beyond These Points, We Are Changed speaks to the idea that passing through certain places, even briefly, can alter us in subtle but lasting ways.