The Fantastic Sky Race

Earlier this month the Wake County Parking deck (one day to become the L Building) got a colorful new addition – The Fantastic Sky Race. If you are like me you heard art installation, saw it was cool and took a couple of pictures of it and didn’t think much of it. I had heard in passing that the project had something to do with the Wake County Library so I assumed all the images were from random children’s books of which I was not familiar.  Not till we parked under the last panel with the title of the piece did I realize that perhaps this had more of an original and local angle than I thought.

So I did a little web surfing and learned that this was not images from random children’s books but art from three NCSU design students. I also found a photo set on Flickr of the images used for the panels.  On closer inspection I found the NCSU bell tower, a zeppelin with an acorn and a flying statue of Sir Walter Raleigh. There is probably more I missed but the images on Flickr are definitely worth looking at closely.  There may even be a Star Wars reference – is that Cloud City on the next to last panel?

Enjoy the largest and perhaps coolest art installation in Raleigh while it lasts and hit the Flickr set for a few details that are hard to catch as you drive by.