San Francisco International Airport, Terminal 3

Ellingson's first major public commission was also the largest mosaic the San Francisco Arts Commission had ever undertaken — an abstract mural running the length of a Terminal 3 concourse, using color, geometry, repetition, scale and spatial illusion to suggest movement and transformation.

Her practice translates digital compositions into traditional media. Here that meant roughly 70,000 hand-cut, hand-glazed tiles, fabricated by Mosaika Art & Design in Montreal. The project began as a terrazzo floor concept and evolved into a 10-by-109-foot wall work.

Installed in Terminal 3 and seen by travelers from around the world, it is a permanent work at civic scale — a field of color that resolves, up close, into the marks of the hand.