April '10 was second best April on record

(Moline/Quad Cities) - It was announced today at the Metropolitan Airport Authority monthly board meeting that April, 2010, was the second best April in history. 37,735 passengers were enplaned, 377 passengers shy of the record held by April '08. Total passengers for the year are up 6% over 2009.

"Whenever we have flights added back into the daily schedule, we see an increase in passenger traffic," Bruce Carter, Director of Aviation said. "Two flights were added by Delta on April 6th to Minneapolis-St. Paul and Detroit, and another daily flight will be added to Memphis in early June. With the addition of these flights, there are more than 200 daily seats available to our passengers."

In other news, a historical photo display has been unveiled at the Art@ the Airport gallery located across from the restaurant. The gallery features a series of enlarged photos from the early years of Moline aviation including special flight landings, a series of the interior of the 1954 terminal, a display of hanging model airplanes, and much more. An "Aviation Adventure" contest is being held in conjunction with other area agencies including the Putnam/Imax, Quad City Air show, Quad City Arts, and the Quad Cities Convention & Visitors Bureau. More information about the Aviation Adventure, including details about the grand prize being offered, can be found by clicking on the aviation adventure link at qcairport.com, under the contests & specials button.

The eighth "Honor Flight of the Quad Cities" is scheduled to depart Wednesday morning May 26th at 7:00 a.m. and return at approximately 10:30 p.m. The public is welcome to greet the veterans upon their return, after they have spent the day visiting the WWII memorial, and other historic memorials and monuments.

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Reader issue #695 How could a show of teapots be extraordinary? Wouldn't that be like having an exhibition of kitchen appliances?

We all have an image of a teapot, but these are not those teapots. Teapots: Object to Subject, the current show at the Figge Art Museum, is like a Mad Hatter's tea party.

Banana Bloom Rick Lodmell is both prepared and lucky.

 

Equipped with a 10.2-megapixel camera, a calm spirit, and an eye for beauty, he ardently tramps out into the Hennepin canal landscape during twilight and early morning, in all seasons. He is looking for that momentary vision of the natural world, always moving and transforming, to capture what is seen in an instant.

 

Clear Your Mind: Contemporary Glass Invitational The Figge Art Museum's Contemporary Glass Invitational feels dangerous. The glass process itself carries the physical peril of fire and molten liquid. The artistic effects are also unsettling, combining soothing beauty with surprise. These glass sculptures glow with intense and subtle visual pleasures, but they also create anxiety through their tensions and contradictions.

Reader issue #657 John Bloom was a master of lines. Drawing directly from everyday life, he transformed his observations with a skillful economy and nuance that can only come from long experience and total observation. Even in his lithographic printmaking, his subtle and beautifully lighted tones were created by a multitude of lines. In his paintings, his linear preparations paid off in a painting style that grew progressively lighter, almost effortless.

fiberglas 1 A luminescent circle gleams over an ocean of subtle fabric waves. Little squares of small purple beads sit like boats on a pale-blue sea. Surprising fragments of red and white texture enter from the side. A cloaked green figure seems to walk along the shore to a blue-misted house in the distance. Behind in the sky, cloud forms repeat the patterns on the surface of the water. Little gold amulets shine in the light. One can feel the coolness in the air and the breeze rising up from the water.

Snakeskin A huge foam cornucopia, curling in a massive yellowish shape, fills up the entire front window of the Leger Gallery in its current exhibit. Instead of the smooth perfect curve of a mathematical spiral, we have an unevenly textured solidified liquid used in a completely new way to describe the flow of thought and time and nature. With an industrial material normally used to insulate houses, Terry Rathje has created a buoyant example of the lively and inventive presentation inside.

Double Ferris WheelIowa Pastimes, Thomas C. Jackson's current exhibit of paintings at the Figge Art Museum, is filled with vivid observations of two American institutions filtered through the single eye of the artist's camera. Both worlds - political conventions and the Iowa State Fair - are spectaculars with bright lights, designed to generate excitement and movement, and they make their appeals to the great cross section of America.

img_0509.jpg In the new exhibit at Quad City Arts, the concept of the private journey is illustrated by two artists. But by showing only the means of literal transportation - vessels and roads - the artists create something universal to help us consider our own spiritual travels.

Joan Webster-Vore presents dream-like paper vessels of poetic beauty, while Fritz Goeckner shows large, softly bright digital color photographs of rural highway landscapes that offer the everyday in a new and beautiful way.

Ralph Iaccarino, Aquatic Rush Hour - Koi Dance Artists Ralph Iaccarino and Silvia Engel are wonderfully matched in an attractive show at the MidCoast Fine Arts Gallery at the Mississippi Valley Welcome Center in LeClaire. Iaccarino paints light and musical colors in a flat space, while Engel works in a shallow space with luminescent three-dimensional colors.

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