Feb. 25, 2002, 10:56AM

New mural aims for tranquility at Bush Intercontinental

By BRUCE WESTBROOK
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle

WHILE clouds can be soothing, getting among them can be stressful, especially at busy George Bush Intercontinental Airport, which had 43 million passengers last year.

Houston artist Dixie Friend Gay sits by her mural at Bush Intercontinental Airport. She has worked for four years to complete the project.

But thanks to new nature-themed artwork, the pressures of arrival and departure are eased by a dip in a sea of tranquility.

That's the concept behind a new 73-foot-by-8-foot Byzantine glass mosaic mural at the airport. It's part of a new passageway connecting Terminal B with the A/B Terminals parking garage.

The structure was designed by Houston architect Rey de la Reza. The art was created by Houston artist Dixie Friend Gay. The monthlong installation of her mural ended this week, and the building should be ready by early March.

As part of ongoing efforts to lace Bush's sprawling grounds with art, the Houston Airport System awarded Gay a $250,000 commission for the project in July 1998.

She's best known for exhibits of her sculptures and paintings in small museums and at galleries, including Houston's McMurtrey Gallery. Gay also has branched into public-art projects in recent years, including at Sylvan Rodriguez Park in the Clear Lake area, where she designed a plaza ringed with trees.

She began her airport assignment with hands-on research. Taking a camera, Gay kayaked for many miles through Houston's bayous, starting with a tributary that reaches the back yard of her home and studio in the Heights.

"The idea of the mural is to take a journey," she said. "You enter where it's very narrow, and as you move down the wall, you move into the open space of the bay where it's misty, with an expanse of water in the distance."

The mural is set against a gradually undulating wall on one side of the passageway, which opens into a large rotunda. Supporting its domed ceiling are five elliptical columns covered by the same mosaic materials as the wall.

Gay designed special lights for the rotunda's domed ceiling. These cast silhouettes of leafy patterns against a bronze treelike design and bronze castings of creatures on the terrazzo floor.

She estimates the mural and columns contain 1.5 million pieces of glass. Most are less than a half-inch square, and some are mere slivers.

Gay first created a 15-foot painting in her studio. Using the larger proportions of the mural wall to come, she noted an average adult's eye-level line on her canvas. Objects above and below that line took shape accordingly.

The mosaic then was created under her supervision at a workshop in Mexico. That part of the project took about a year.

Gay created the painting "so there's not a lot of interpretation." Workers on the project would see clearly how the lines should flow and what the colors should be.

"Most mosaics are like cartoons, with uniform colors filling in spaces inside strong lines," Gay said. "This is more of a blend of colors, which become a different color when you step back. It's an infinite number of colors, really."

Some mosaic pieces also contain 24-carat gold, creating an iridescent effect, notably in the dragonfly's bright wings.

Besides the dragonfly, elements include flora and fauna from the ecosystem of Houston's bayous -- ducks, birds, a water snake.

The snake's image slithers out of the wall at its base and onto the floor's surface for a couple of feet.

"Kids should like that," Gay said. "It's a surprise, it's fun, and I like how it anchors the mural in this space, with the wall and the floor connecting."

The snake, birds and insects all are much larger than in nature so that they'll pop out of the mural and not be lost. As Gay says, "It's a huge wall."

Gay, 48, grew up on an Oklahoma ranch and received a master's degree in studio arts from New York University.
She's lived in Houston since 1988. Husband Ron Gay teaches obstetrics anesthesia at Baylor College of Medicine. Son Hagen is 15, and daughter Garland almost 7.

Gay considers herself an environmentalist and believes Houston's bayous "are sacred and shouldn't be treated like a sewer." That's why she created her bayou artwork in a medium traditionally used in churches and cathedrals.

"Mosaics are associated with sacred art. My background is in art of the sacred, the spiritual. Trees, nature and spirituality come together here."

She hopes a stroll through the passageway will have "a soothing, calming effect" on passengers.

"If you're always in a hurry at the airport, maybe you need to slow down. Nature can have that calming effect. I also left a lot of open space in the piece so you can kind of get lost in places."

The work doesn't have a title yet, though it may be called, "Houston Bayous," she said. A plaque at the site will give the name and other information.

"We are, after all, called the Bayou City," Gay said. "But a lot of people don't realize what our bayous really look like. This will give them an idea."