30,000 Feet

Brad Miller

King County International Airport

A playful installation restores wonder to the miracle of flight.

Thirty thousand one-foot wooden rulers flank the entry to the King County International Airport’s terminal building, densely arranged into two enormous arrows that point toward the ceiling: there hangs a pair of illuminated photographs. One pictures clouds in a royal blue sky—the view passengers often see from a commercial jet at 30,000 feet. The sky image surrounds a second, smaller photo suspended below it, featuring a lush, dark evergreen forest, as it would look from a small aircraft flying at 2,000 feet.

Seen from the ground floor or the mezzanine, Brad Miller's 30,000 Feet creates a dizzying sense of perspective and marvel at the sheer wonder of earth, sky, and flight. The 30,000 rulers make tangible the altitude of air travel while simultaneously boggling the mind with their scale. Together the rulers can measure a great distance, but they also shrink in comparison to the trees from which they were made and the forests from which those trees came.

Air travel is commonplace and yet it is amazing that we can comfortably sip a beverage 30,000 feet above the earth. The one-foot wooden ruler is a low-tech tool that harkens back to the time when the first human flight was accomplished with pens and pencils and simple tools. –Brad Miller
Brad Miller is known primarily for his conceptual art and approach to public, site-integrated projects. He often explores human systems and the objects we make to understand our surroundings. His work has been commissioned and exhibited throughout the Pacific Northwest.

About the Location

King County International Airport

The site of the King County International Airport, also known as Boeing Field, has been a hotbed of aviation activity since the early 20th century when the flat land along the Duwamish River hosted early air shows. The location was home to the young Boeing Airplane Company before the citizens of King County voted in…

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