Let's say you are looking for a place to hang several dozen kites, some of them quite large. You walk into your neighborhood library. You notice the high ceilings and the beams. For Scott Hampton, a man who likes to exhibit kites, the Sandy Library is almost heaven.
There's no wind, of course. And no sky. So it's not quite heaven. The kites don't look quite as magical as they do outside, when they lift and soar against a background of blue.Still, in the library, a lot of people will notice them. And Hampton wants people to see the kites. By exhibiting kites, hanging them as works of art, he takes his hobby one step further. This hobby, he says, has become his passion and his therapy.
He started flying kites 10 years ago. He hadn't thought about kites since he was a child, until he walked into a kite shop and he saw a stunt kite. It looked like fun. It was fun. Every night after work, even as fall turned to winter, Hampton would fly his kite.
Pretty soon, he began collecting kites. Then he began making them - and then exhibiting them.
This is the third time in four years Hampton has set up an exhibit at the library. Each exhibit is more ambitious than the last. This exhibit, "Patchwork on a String," features 54 one-of-a-kind kites from all over the world. (The display runs through February at the library, 10100 S. Petunia Way.)
The kites dominate the library's main hall. Huge geometric patterns dangle from the rafters. There are also bugs, clouds and buffalo. Some kites are patchwork, shapes of fabric stitched together. Other kites appear to have been silkscreened, airbrushed or painted with watercolors.
If you walk with Hampton through his wonderland, you can spend hours talking kites. He knows each creation - its style, its maker and how it flies.
He says, "This 15-foot genki wing was made by a gentleman in the Netherlands. He came up with the horizontal billboard shape several years ago. . .
"This long shape, the `noodle,' is a very popular shape in the West right now. The advantage is it can fly in high or low wind really really well." He explains why it is so adaptable. "There's not a lot of weight. And it has an adjustable bridle . . .
"This one is by an artist in Wales. He is one of the few of us who makes a living - meager - at kite art."
Hampton sprinkles his dialogue with bits of history: Before World War I, before aircraft, armies sent men up in box kites to observe the location of each other's troops.
Fighting kites come from and are still popular in Asian countries. In India you can see people flying their fighters off rooftops, making their kites swerve and swoop to cut each other's strings.
In Thailand, fighter kites come in two different shapes, male and female. During one of the most popular kite flying festivals, there's a contest between a dozen male kites all trying to capture one female. In the "Patchwork" display Hampton devotes a whole wall to fighter kites.
Hampton says most people, when they start to make kites, begin with traditional styles. They begin with a classic, a proven flier for thousands of years - something like the box, or the sode (kimono), or the malay (basic square, bowed).
Some kite-makers use traditional materials as well: handmade paper and slivers of bamboo. However most modern kite-makers, including most of those in the Patchwork exhibit, use space age stuff: the lightest and strongest nylon, supported by graphite struts.
They may begin with traditional designs, but eventually, like all artists, kite-makers want to extend themselves. The best place to see the new shapes and styles is at a kite-flying festival.
Hampton is part of a local, a national and an international network of kite-makers and kite fliers. The American Kite Association has about 5,000 members. Only a half dozen live in Utah.
Small though it is, the local group participates in two festivals each year at the Great Salt Lake. The largest festival put on by the national group is on Long Beach in Washington state. Last year, that event drew 100,000 spectators to see 4,000 kites painting the sky on a Sunday afternoon. Festivals in Europe are even larger, Hampton says.
The best place to hold a festival is on the coastline, where you get a steady wind off the ocean. In the valleys of Utah, the winds tend to be gusty and turbulent.
Hampton would love to go to more festivals, to go to a foreign festival. But here is the reality of this local kite-maker's life: He's a schoolteacher who can't get much time off. His wife and children aren't as entranced as he and don't want to spend more than one vacation a year at a kite festival.
Hampton's dream would be to be well-known enough to be invited to show his kites at a festival - all-expenses paid - the way some of the other artists in the Patchwork exhibit have been. Festival promoters are partial to big kites, usually soft structures, larger than 6,000 square feet. But miniature-makers and others with a distinctive style sometimes are invited, too.
Hampton has several full-size and miniature kites in the library display, all distinctively his. His colors are brilliant - magenta, orange, blue, trimmed in black and white. And then there is the way the colors blend into each other. He uses cat-box litter and spray paint for a stippled effect, Hampton explains.
It used to be the flying that drew him to kites. Now, it is the creating. He spends every evening in the basement bedroom that he has turned into a workshop. He doodles out designs and then, when he has one he likes, he begins the sewing and painting. Hampton made maybe a hundred miniature kites and a dozen large ones last year.
He doesn't get out for hours of flying every day, like he used to. Still, the wind and sky and the magic of flight are part of what draws him to kite-making.
As he works, through the dark winter evenings, Hampton says he is always conscious of the wind. He can hear it gusting outside the window. He can hear it rattling the fence.
The wind is always in the back of his mind as he crafts a kite. He knows how it blows in this valley, how it comes from the south when a storm is moving in, and how, after a storm, it shifts and comes from the north west.
When he finishes a kite, it is usually late at night. Then, no matter how dark or cold, he can never wait for the morning to take his new creation outside. He stands on his front lawn and raises it to the night sky and he watches how his new creation begins to bow and lift.
Lately, Hampton's started to wonder why more people don't appreciate the beauty of kites. He called a few art galleries to ask if anyone would like an installation of unusual art.
The gallery owners act intrigued when he mentions "fiber art" or "structural art." But when he says the word "kites," they lose interest.
You have to wonder what they were thinking. What is the connotation of the word "kite?" Kid stuff? Kitsch stuff? Hampton doesn't know. He only knows what he sees when he looks at a kite.
And even if an art gallery never picks up his work, a kite-maker has a certain advantage over other artists. He can take his kite outside. It will get picked up by the wind. It will be displayed against the sky. Even without the approval of one other earth-bound person - if he has crafted it well - his handiwork will be lifted to heaven.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
How kites fly
When flown at the proper angle a kite will strike the air with greater pressure at the front than the back. The difference between the pressure on the front and back will create lift and cause the kite to rise. The resistance to the forward motion is called drag. The combination of lift, drag, line tension and gravity keep the kite flying.