The Sound Of Flight
Location
Installation Date: 2015
The primary artist for this mural, Sky Black, prefers to leave his surrealistic mural’s meaning to the interpretation of the viewer. Although the mural is open to interpretation, there is a lot of symbolism in the artwork. The striking image of almost 200 birds flying out of an ornately decorated grand piano depicts the climax of a song. More than a dozen of the birds were painted with community members. Others are memory birds, sponsored by families who have lost loved ones. The hawk is dedicated to the primary artist’s high school friend who passed away a few years before the mural was painted. The birds make their way across the wall past the twenty-five-foot figures of Michelangelo’s David and a woman in red who is the lyrical muse of the piece.The birds then migrate over the head of a howling wolf and Rodin’s statue The Thinker and into the sun as it sets in the Grand Canyon. The wolf guarding the canyonlands represents Echo, the gray wolf found in the Grand Canyon and killed in Utah in 2014.
The mural is made possible through a City of Flagstaff Beautification in Action Grant (BBB funded) and more than 500 individual donations. It took eight months to paint.
About the Artwork
About the Artist
Sky Black was born in 1992 in Flagstaff, AZ and has been professionally painting for nearly 15 years. He is an accomplished gallery artist and muralist. The Orpheum Theatre in Flagstaff holds Sky’s largest mural where he teamed up with the Mural Mice and covered the entire 4,500 sq/ft wall.
In 2016, Street Art Berlin hired him to paint a mural in Berlin, Germany and brought him back again for a second project in Zurich, Switzerland in 2019. Most of his large scale public works can be viewed in Arizona and his paintings and prints have found many homes across the US and internationally.
Sky’s painting style is simultaneously technical and painterly with themes that range from pristine landscapes to surreal scenes and strange happenings.
Sky is now raising a family with his wife and paints full time out of a cabin studio on the outskirts of Flagstaff.
Questions for Elementary School Families
What do you see happening in this mural?
What do you notice about the birds?
How many birds are there? What colors are they? How are they flying?
Where do you think the birds are coming from, and where are they going?
How do you feel when you look at the mural? What makes you feel that way?
What story do you think that artist is trying to tell in this mural?
What do you think this mural says about Flagstaff and the people who live here?
The artist said the birds are flying out of the piano during the most exciting part of a song. What kind of song do you think is playing?
Questions for Secondary School Families
What are the first things you notice when you look at this mural?
What parts of the mural draw your attention first? What parts do you notice after a few minutes of observing?
What emotions or moods does the mural make you feel? Why do you think it makes you feel that way?How would you describe the overall atmosphere of the mural?
The hawk is dedicated to a friend that the artist lost. In what ways does knowing that change how you see the mural?
Extension Activity
This mural uses music to inspire the art that is seen. Listen to your favorite song and create a painting that reflects a part of that song. Think about how the song makes you feel and show that feeling in your art using color, texture, and imagery.
