by Michael J. Solender
Public artworks often face layers of permitting and oversight, though they typically don’t need FAA approval.
Yet before metal artist Hoss Haley could install his 40-foot-high steel and concrete sculpture, Old Growth, at Modern Aviation (formerly Wilson Air Center) adjacent to Charlotte Douglas International Airport, he needed the government agency’s OK.
With a distinctive rust- and earthen-colored patina, 27 elongated hollow steel boxes are stacked and spread out to form a 40-foot-wide canopy. The work is fashioned in a way that, for some, evokes a towering oak tree reaching for the sky. Others see a Jenga-like structure — blocks akimbo, shifting in the wind and failing to yield to both gravity and the laws of physics.
Fabricated from 25 tons of high-strength, weather-resistant steel alloy, the piece is supported by a 150,000-pound concrete base. The work was commissioned by the Charlotte Arts & Science Council and the Public Art Commission and was installed in 2015.
Haley, who lives near Penland in western North Carolina, says Old Growth is the largest piece he’s ever designed. He notes that despite the work’s enormous scale, the precision required in aligning the boxes — which are bolted together from the inside — offered little margin for error.
“There were places where the crane operator couldn’t see where the piece was going,” Haley recalls. “I would direct the crane in close — within a foot or so — and then my assistant, inside the piece, had a radio and he would guide the crane in the rest of the way.”
Hayley said the payoff on installation day is when he sees the crane operators come around.
“On projects like this, the crew always comes in doubtful,” Haley says. “They know construction, not art, and assume something’s bound to go wrong. I remember the foreman, after we set the fourth piece, coming over wide-eyed saying, ‘I think we’re actually going to get this whole thing up today.’ He had no idea how many sleepless nights I had to make sure of it. The best part is when the language shifts from, ‘You can’t do that,’ to ‘We’ve got this.’”
Though the work projects a singular and solitary nature, its scale suggests it may be part of a stately forest.
After all, Charlotte is the City of Trees. SP
