Delta Airline’s Big Thank You (it sure is pretty up on the wall)

May 30, 2017

Part 2 of 2 … (see this first half of this blog here)

I walked into the Delta Airline’s Corporate Headquarters one time in the spring of 1999. I was delivering a catered lunch to a meeting room. At the time, I was working in Peachtree City, Georgia as a waiter. I don’t remember much about that trip. I do recall that I had a hard time opening the big glass doors and I wished they had sent a helper with me. I felt out of place.

18 Years later Delta renovated the lobby and cafeteria in the same building and somehow I ended up back there. This time my wife and a couple friends went met me there. I had no troubles with large glass doors. We went to look at the newly installed mural I had just finished for Delta as part of the Big Thank You event. It was a happy time.

I could not be more thrilled to have been a key part to the Big Thank You event — an event seen worldwide on FaceBook Live. I was featured alongside the reading of all 88,000 Delta employees names and appearances by over 430 celebrities, athlete and business leaders. There were magic tricks, balloons, airplanes from the future, talking dogs, long-legged dancing ladies and a bear who could juggle while he rode a bike. Amazing.

They left me in a tent with cans of paint and a sack of brushes and I did all I could do. A coffee and a few granola bars and some good music got me through. I really enjoyed existing inside of the painting. It wrapped around me on 3 sides and with the tent over the top I felt like I was inside the art. I was inside of the vision. I felt like a whole bunch of hard shiny stained-glass candy collided at high speed with a bright happy dream. The shockwave traveled down my spine and out my arm onto the wet canvas. I was merely the middle man.

Thanks to Carly and Adam from Delta. Thanks to the installers who put all 9’x 27′ feet of mural on the wall. Thanks to Chiara, Caroline, Emma Kate and all my Moxie friends and production crew folks who made this  happen.  Thanks to Angie for helping me paint one afternoon and Maria for keeping me in shape and pointed in the right direction.

See a little video about the mural here.

see you soon,
Kyle BlackCatTips Brooks