There's an amazing installation in the pedestrian bridge that connects the terminal to the parking garage at the Sacramento Airport. It's an aerial image of approximately 50 miles of the Sacramento River between Colusa and Chico - represented in carpet.

Artist Seyed Alavi describes it as a piece that connects travelers geographically to the place they're passing through. This resonates loud and clear with us, given our affinity for all things map-related, and the use of technological tools for understanding ecology, history, and place.

This installation is remarkable, simply for the artistic quality, the detail and the medium (although I bet those carpet fibers weren't manufactured in a closed-loop system), but it was made even more interesting to me by the commentary from Alexander Trevi at one of my favorite blogs, Pruned, where I discovered it this morning. Worth a read: To Icarus