Rubin: A new mural at WSU remembers an old tradition ― paper airplanes, rocketing high

The new mural at Wayne State University is near and dear to the artist's heart.

It's also close to a bathroom, which was nice.

The 7½-by-26-foot piece on the first floor of the Student Center is a tribute to a tradition that nearly 50 years of Wayne State students will remember fondly and that everyone who has ever flown a paper airplane should admire greatly.

It's festive, attractive, imaginative, collaborative and altogether impressive, even if it's not as mammoth or problematic as some of Ani Garabedian's other projects ― and even if she never launched a paper projectile 2½ stories straight up and buried its nose in an acoustic tile ceiling.

That was the tradition she wanted to commemorate on the public-facing wall of the only Detroit branch of Community Financial Credit Union. From 1969 or so until the Student Center was remodeled in 2014, thousands of paper airplanes wound up with their snouts embedded above the diners in the commons area of what started as a small cafeteria and evolved into a food court.

Garabedian, 47, was too busy earning two art degrees and becoming a painter to master airplane-flinging. She still cherished her time on campus, she said, as a student and later an instructor, and "I wanted to make sure Wayne State had a representation in this."

The mural's proximity to modern conveniences was a bonus.

Sacrificing for art

Garabedian insists that while she always had an interest in art, "I didn't have any natural talent."

To make up for that inconvenience, she studied, worked, worked some more, and has kept working. As she points to parts of the mural on a Monday morning, she has dark paint on some of her fingers and nails, the residue of a weekend experiment in her Detroit home studio.

For one mural in Lake Orion, she had to project her outline of a four-story dragon onto a building from a nearby roof. For another in southwest Detroit, she had to rent a generator to power her equipment, and that was after five hours of scraping away old paint.

Working outside in November? Learning to operate a boom lift?

"You just know you have to figure it out," she said.

Then there was the Wayne State job in December, where she had heat and restrooms and coffee, with the Midtown Market waiting across the wide hallway if she wanted a slushy.

The credit union left the lights on for her if she needed to work late or on the weekend, and when she stretched out to paint the part of the mural that includes the door to the rear offices, employees graciously stepped over her.

Like Garabedian, Community Financial CEO Tansley Stearns feels a connection to WSU. She used to roller skate around campus while her parents went to class.

Beyond that, she said, her corporate culture is one where "we're big believers in art. It's important to make spaces joyful."

Garabedian said her conferences with credit union executives were honest-to-goodness helpful as the basics of the mural took shape.

Origami bears to represent Daisy, the credit union mascot, whose name dates to the Plymouth roots of the former windmill company that makes Daisy air rifles. A purple background, most of it matching the precise shade of the cooperative's official color.

And floating through all of it, multiple shapes and sizes of folded airplanes.

The origins of flight

No one was taking notes at the time, but the best guess is that the airplanes first took flight at the hands of engineering students.

Before they vanished a decade ago, there were dogfights ― former WSU president David Adamany, new to the job, ordered them removed in 1982 ― but they always came back.

Hundreds of them. A thousand, sometimes, if it had been a while since a work crew went aloft to change lightbulbs and thinned the herd.

Some were made of flyers for campus events, some of notebook paper, some of magazine covers. Designs varied: tight as darts, short and wide, somewhere in between.

A second-floor display in a glass case contains a few survivors, and Jessica Beesley, an associate director at the Student Center, helped unfold and box some others. They bore dates as far back as the early '70s, she said, and sometimes notes − "Saleh 🧡 Linda 5-15-02."

Beesley enrolled at Wayne State in 1999 and never left. Never mastered the art of airplane propulsion, either, but it hasn't hurt her career.

“I saw a few people make it,” she said, maybe after gathering at a table for a folding session that looked like a group crafts project.

Success always brought a chorus of cheers from students in search of a commonality on a commuter campus that didn’t get its first dormitory until 2002.

There were two principal approaches to propulsion. The more rakish pilots would lean back in their plastic chairs, grasp the airplane behind the nose with their thumbs or index fingers, spread their elbows, draw the plane back behind them like an arrow on a bowstring, and let fly.

Others would stand, bend deep, turn the airplane nose-down, and flip it as they rocketed upright.

Garabedian said she tried to capture the variety and spirit in paint.

Some of her airplanes are shaded. Some are lined. She had planned to use a straight edge for their contours, but opted for freehand and less perfection. The purple backdrop gives way in places to reds and blues, subtle bursts of emotion.

When she walks past her creation, she said, she doesn't slow down. She wants to see it the way a visitor would, or a former student, not like an artist second-guessing herself over dabs and placements.

"It's in the world now," she said.

Let it soar.

Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: New mural at Wayne State recalls bygone launches of paper airplanes