The airport gallery behind baggage claim  

Nestled away just inside the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport’s baggage claim on the wall closest to the exit is a small gallery of Chattanooga area artists’ paintings. Located in the CHA Art Space, the collection is curated by Chattanooga artist Carrie Pendergrass.

“I had always been in different airports with different kinds of art displays and thought it would be a good addition to our beloved tiny airport here in Chattanooga,” Pendergrass said.

The current display revolves around the theme of “Remind Me” featuring 12 local artists. Each piece in CHA Art Space is for sale. All proceeds help support the artists directly.  

Started in 2021, Pendergrass wanted a space for artists to be seen and supported by travelers. CHA Art Space started with a grant project from Arts Build, a local non-profit.

“Arts Build, our local arts funder where art grants funnel through. They had a call to artists for these things called ‘Artist Work Grants,’ and basically, as an artist you could apply and most of the projects either culminated in an exhibit or performance of some kind, and they were all public facing. When I had found out about the grants, they had already worked it out with some public spaces, the airport was not one of them, but that was where my thoughts came to ‘I wonder if they’d be interested and if I got permission,’” Pendergrass said.

After receiving and finalizing the $13,000 grant, Pendergrass began building the exhibit. The first rendition was a mobile exhibit on wheeled stands inside the airport rotunda. It then relocated to the welcome and ticket area of the airport. Airport construction required a flexible gallery space.

“I have one piece, it’s called ‘Stan’s Dad and His Lap Steel Guitar (Back From War)’ it’s based on an old photograph, and that’s something I’ve been exploring a lot in my work, I like to paint the figure,” Gayle Tucker, one of the featured artists, said.

Tucker’s piece is oil on canvas resembling an old photograph of a friend’s father with a steel lap guitar. Her goal was to create a memory by painting the figure a bit fainter than the original photograph.

Jill Sattler is another artist featured in the exhibit. Her painting is called “Interstice.”  It is acrylic with wax pastels on canvas measuring three feet in length by two feet in height. This piece features a woman looking off at a door that the artist has described as opening or closing depending on viewer interpretation.  

“This was my first attempt at painting a human face, my favorite thing to paint is birds. I hated everything about the first iteration, so I just started painting over it and I was like ‘Now what am I going to do?’ So, I started with the background, and I decided to actually paint a real face, where Uma Thurman was my main inspiration for the face,” Sattler said.

The gallery can be easily missed by travelers who don’t look around them as they exit the airport through baggage claim.

“I’ve been in museums before, but I’ve never seen anything like this. I really like how some of the pieces are abstract, it’s really cool,” said Jordan Harb, an airport traveler admiring the art.  

Travelers who get bored waiting to pick up their luggage at the carousels can fill their time gazing at the imaginations of local artists from southern Tennessee.