A ski-lift chair usually belongs to a trip up a mountain. At Iowa City’s Fairmeadows Park, it helps people wait for a bus.
Uplift is a bright orange, 12-foot-tall functional sculptural bus-stop bench at 2451 Miami Drive along Lakeside Drive. Created by Ethan Wyatt with mentor Ray Michels, the work incorporates a ski-lift chair and serves Iowa City Transit stop 8069.
A second artwork uses a very different piece of transportation infrastructure. Jenna Brownlee’s Flights Through Time covers an airport hangar facing South Riverside Drive at Iowa City Municipal Airport, 1801 S. Riverside Drive. Completed in fall 2023, the artwork measures 12 feet tall and 300 feet long and depicts local aviation history from Tom Baldwin’s Red Devil flight in 1910 through contemporary aircraft.
One piece is designed to be sat on during an ordinary transit stop. The other uses a working airport structure to carry a historical timeline. If viewing the hangar artwork, stay within appropriate public areas and do not enter airport operational spaces.
