Northeast Minneapolis Arts District ceramic/mosaic artists’ creations helped Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport win awards for best bathrooms (with 40 percent of the vote) and most recently, best airport in their size category.
In March 2017, the Airports Council International announced the Twin Cities airport earned top honors for North American airports that service 25-40 million passengers a year.
In November 2016, Cintas Corporation held a contest on “a mission to locate America’s porcelain pioneers who are taking dramatic steps to create unforgettable facilities.”
An image of a mountain bike in the south main mall men’s room and a canoe in the matching women’s room by Caron Bell and Mercedes Austin of Mercury Mosaics were featured in a twincities.com article on the bathroom award.
Sheryl Tuorila’s work in one of the other airport bathrooms is in the first photo below.
Artists Amy Baur and Brian Boldon of Inplainsight Art Studio explain that the artwork in the bathroom they installed, “Nascent,” “Blueprint” and “Inviting Wonder” are three separate pieces designed to be “discoverable and similar to a journey.” They see the airport as a place of change as well as travel. They said, “Minneapolis is rich in combining old buildings with new ideas. The colors are vintage industrial and resonate with the understanding that the past does not have to be replaced.”
The artworks on the three walls are from street shots taken in the North Loop and Northeast neighborhoods. Inplainsight Art prints imagery with ceramic pigments and permanently kiln-fuses them to tile.
Below: First: Mercury Mosaics. Next: Sheryl Tuorila’s murals: Jeana Sommers (right) helped on all aspects of fabrication and installation, and Jan Hohn of Hohn and Hohn (left) assisted on installation. A time-lapse video of the preparation is at https://youtu.be/TqvMZPTPNWU. Then: inplainsightart in context.