Artist Detour Packs a Lot of Meaning Into His New Piece at Denver International Airport

There are 183 bags in "It’s Not What You Take, It’s What You Bring Back," the new installation by Thomas "Detour" Evans on the B Concourse at Denver International Airport. One carries particular meaning: It belonged to renowned artist Darrell Anderson, who created a piece for Concourse A more than thirty years ago, in the first round of public art commissioned through Denver's 1-percent-for-the-art program for work at the airport that would replace Stapleton. Anderson knew all about that airport: He was the first male flight attendant at the original Frontier Airlines, working that job for a dozen years while he built up his real career as an artist. The bag in Evans's piece is Anderson's old briefcase, locked; he doesn't remember the combination.

Detour left its contents a mystery, too. But there are more discoverable surprises intertwined with the bags that comprise the new piece: a Nikola Jokic jersey, a pair of tennis shoes, a guitar, binoculars, all tucked into the giant chain of bags painted in pastels that range from a Colorado sunrise to a Colorado sunset. From a distance — and since this is by Gate 60, you've got a lot of distance to cover to get to this point of the concourse — the piece looks like an infinity symbol. From underneath, it's an oval, the shape of a successful journey.
For Detour, the journey to this point has been very successful. Like Anderson, he grew up in a military family and got his start in art drawing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for friends in Germany. "Start young and just keep going," he advises would-be artists; he was ten when Denver's new airport opened. From there, he kept drawing and painting, becoming renowned around town for his murals of Jokic, among others. Today, he paints murals around the world...but he still can't resist a good local wall, including a certain Tuff Shed off Interstate 70.

Detour spent a lot of time on I-70 after he got this airport commission in 2022, proposing to use "upcycled objects and stories that create a portrait of Colorado," he recalls. "Bags are universal." He put out a call for donations and was overwhelmed by bags: some from fans, some from migrants, some from other Black creatives like Anderson and dancer Cleo Parker Robinson. He stuffed them full of fire retardant material and a few "Easter eggs," he hints, then painted them with the same spraypaint he uses for his murals. (He's selling shadowboxes that contain the empty cans...and he also designs overalls that are for sale on his I Am Detour website.)

"It's Not What You Take" is one of the few pieces that Detour has done indoors and his first that's three-dimensional, for which he had "zero" experience, he admits The finished piece is 3,000 pounds and 26 feet long, it hangs suspended from the ceiling as travelers head into the 39 new gates on the Concourse B expansion.
“I was super ecstatic to be selected to be a part of the process of adding art to such a vibrant place where millions of travelers pass through during their journey in life,” Detour says. He's also excited by the thought that, while his murals might have a life of five years if he's lucky, this could last for "centuries."

That's probably longer than airport CEO Phil Washington might be anticipating, but he's certainly thinking about the future. At the dedication of Detour's work on January 22, he noted that DIA just broke traffic records in 2024, with 83 million passengers; it's the third-busiest airport in the country, and the "fifth or sixth busiest in the world."

When Denver International Airport was designed, officials were anticipating 50 million passengers. Today, the airport is blowing past all predictions. That's why it expanded Concourse B, and with that project completed, the airport is working on another expansion on Concourse C, which will have eleven more gates. And that means more art, Washington noted.

It's in the bag!