Art installation adds splash of color to Sea-Tac Airport entrance

A massive new outdoor art installation by Tieton Mosaic is a welcoming ripple of color and light amid the many shades of gray at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

“Migration,” an art project commission for the airport and the Port of Seattle, was installed in May. Viewed mostly from vehicles, it greets visitors and passengers as they approach the terminal at the departures level. The artwork, which covers about 200 feet of a 460-foot-long concrete wall, is also visible from the Link light rail platform.

The piece is the result of an artistic collaboration between Ed Marquand of Tieton and Angelina Villalobos, a Seattle-based muralist, painter and illustrator.

Tieton Mosaic contracted with Villalobos for the design, which features four curving shapes, with 20 copies of each shape. Tieton-based Patriot Companies, formerly located in Wapato, Washington, fabricated the fiberglass shapes.

“They did a terrific job,” Marquand, who established Tieton Mosaic in 2012, said of Patriot Companies.

The mosaic studio collaborates with artists, designers, public art programs and agencies, architects, developers and planners to create and fabricate mosaic murals and signage systems, according to its website, tietonmosaic.com. “Migration” was a nearly two-year-long project, Marquand said.

“We were trying to complete it before” the FIFA World Cup matches in Seattle, he said.

“Migration” was a little unusual for Tieton Mosaic because most of the shapes were coated with various colors of epoxy paint, rather than being covered with the small glass pieces that make up mosaic artworks.

“That’s because you can only see it from a distance,” Marquand said. But a few of the shapes are partially or completely covered in golden mosaic tiles for sparkle, he noted.

Villalobos had worked with Tieton Mosaic previously, as one of six artists whose designs were transformed by the studio into mosaics displayed in Sound Transit’s Downtown Redmond Station. Villalobos also juried an exhibition in Tieton, Washington, in 2024.

Villalobos designed the color scheme for the shapes created by Patriot Companies, one of which she affectionately dubbed “the mighty SLUG!” in a social media post. The wall’s gradual completion revealed more options. The Tieton Mosaic team and staff with the Port of Seattle contributed as the design of “Migration” grew and evolved over several months, and project participants finessed the installation.

This is the second public artwork Tieton Mosaic has completed for Sea-Tac Airport. The first is a vivid three-part mosaic with an image by Sarah More that greets passengers as they enter the Alaska Airlines terminal. A recently completed third project, in the newly renovated C Concourse , was celebrated at a small private reception on Wednesday, Marquand said.

And work continues on a mosaic mural for the new humanities building at Central Washington University in Ellensburg.