Observing decay can be a beautiful thing, especially in the modern context. The Pima Boneyard in Tucson is one of a few mothball facilites where commercial and military aircrafts are retired and eventually stripped for parts.

Pima invited several contemporary artist to paint mural on the bodies of retired WWII aircrafts; the outcome is quite surreal. Give yourself a four-day weekend, fill up your tank with gas and make the trek to Tucson for this exhibit.

–@ybaynes

The Boneyard Project: Return Trip

Pima Air and Space Museum, Tucson, Arizona, USA

January 28th, 2012 until May 31st, 2012

The Pima Air + Space Museum (PIMA) is hosting ‘Art from the Boneyard’, a project curated by Eric Firestone, Carlo McCormick, Leslie Oliver and Med Sobio featuring several non-functioning WWII American military airplanes covered in the painted work

of contemporary artists. in ‘Art from the Boneyard: Return Trip’, How & Nosm, Retna, Andrew Shoultz, Faile, and Nunca, among other creatives, journeyed to a ‘bone yard’, a large resting space for planes in disuse, in order to complete the five massive

mural paintings on the bodies of retired aircrafts.

The tradition of using the massive surface of a plane as a canvas has been a tradition in the United States Air Force for generations. ‘Nose Art’ became a popular form of graffiti painting in the WWII era as soldiers decorated the fronts of the planes which would

carry them into battle. ‘The Boneyard Project: Return Trip’ is the second installation of the series in which the artists created a semi-sculptural, painted expression of his/her associations with the history of air travel and warfare.

via designboom