The Fort Smith Regional Airport (Fort Smith, AR) has purchased and publicly installed four acrylic paintings by Northwest Arkansas artist Charles K. Steiner. The paintings were part of a larger solo exhibition “Dep(art)ing Passengers” shown at The Fort Smith Regional Airport (Fort Smith, AR) in the closing four months of 2018. The Airport purchased a fifth painting from the exhibition, but it is not as yet on view.
The paintings are especially appropriate to show in an airport as they depict passengers waiting for their airplanes in typical airport lounges. Steiner has amusingly caricatured the experience of so many of us as we snack, sleep, or read a newspaper waiting to board our planes. The paintings’ installation is centrally located, adjacent to the airport’s security checkpoint where 90,000 passengers per year pass in order to board their airplanes—more viewers than might be expected at many galleries and museums.
The paintings stem from Steiner’s frequent and often last-minute airplane trips to oversee the care of a family member on the East Coast. Steiner would sketch his fellow passengers in the airports through which he travelled and then translate the drawings to paintings during his intermittent visits to his home studio. The colorful paintings reflect a loose expressionistic style with broad brush strokes to capture the movement of people in airports—whether they were eating, stretching, reading, adjusting luggage, or just waiting for their flights to be announced. Of the new installation, Steiner says, “I am delighted at the public’s enthusiasm for these paintings and hope that their installation at the Fort Smith Regional Airport will serve as a model for other ambitious art programs at other regional airports across the country.” Indeed, some of this nation’s larger airports have impressive art installations, such as Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
The Fort Smith Regional Airport is a public use joint civil-military airport located three miles southeast of Fort Smith, Arkansas (Sebastian County), and also the home of the Fort Smith Air Museum and 9/11 Memorial. The airport is overseen by the Fort Smith Airport Commission as established by the City of Fort Smith. It serves the transportation needs of residents and businesses of Western Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma through the regional airline affiliates of Delta Air Lines and American Airlines and has a large population of corporate and general aviation aircraft. Speaking of Steiner’s paintings, Director of the Fort Smith Regional Airport Michael Griffin says, “We are very happy to welcome back Steiner’s paintings. Many of our customers have remarked that they see aspects of themselves as subjects in the works of art.”
Steiner, who has taught as adjunct faculty at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith, has a BFA in Painting from Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) and an MFA from George Washington University (Washington, DC). In addition to the Fort Smith Regional Airport, Steiner’s works
are included in numerous public and private collections across the country including but not limited to 3-M (Minneapolis, MN), New York Health and Hospital Corporation (NY, NY), and Emprise Bank (Wichita, KS). He has had nine solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions again across the country. He has had two artist residencies at the Edward Albee Foundation (Montauk, NY) and worked in progressively responsible positions for three art museums: the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY, NY), the Princeton University Art Museum (Princeton, NJ), and the Wichita Art Museum (Wichita, KS), the latter as executive director. Steiner’s Web site is www.charleskingsteiner.com.
