I can almost visualize the personal ad:
Mixed connection – You: Pretty, 30-something brunette smiling in the sun, wearing something blue. You made me think about soaring, flying. I waved at you from my car on Highway 526. Thought we made a connection. Meet for coffee or… ?
Well, maybe not. But taking out ads in newspapers worldwide might be one way to solve one of the great Boeing mysteries of the year: Who is that woman on the mural?
The mural is the display spreading across the six giant doors of the Boeing Co.’s Everett factory. Last week, it was named by Guinness World Records as the largest digital graphic in the world.
Five of the mural’s six panels are photos of airplanes taken by a Boeing photographer. But the sixth is a shot of a smiling woman.
After the Guinness announcement last week, a couple of Boeing workers contacted me to ask the obvious question: Who is she, and does she work for Boeing.
The answers: Nobody’s sure, and probably not.
Boeing said the photo was picked by Fitch Design Consultants, the company it hired to help develop the mural. Fitch in turn bought the photo from Getty Images.
Getty is based in Seattle, so I called them.
It turns out that the image was cropped from a larger photo that’s part of the Getty collection. In the original photo, the woman is standing in a field with stalks of grass all around her. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to see in an ad for hay-fever medicine.
Getty’s Peggy Willett said she likes the way the picture was cropped for the mural.
“It’s just a remarkable expression of the freedom of flight,” said Willett, director of community and industry support at Getty. “It’s almost like the woman is a plane, too. I think it’s quite beautiful.”
It turns out the photographer who made the photo is German, so the model is probably from there as well.
Germany, huh? Instead of being a Boeing employee, could it be the woman on the door works for Airbus?
Willett laughed. No, she said, she’s almost certainly a professional model in Europe.
It goes to show that the art world is just as global as aerospace. “We work with photographers all over the world, and we find markets all over the world for their imagery,” Willett said.
It’s likely that the woman on the wall is an anonymous model who never dreamed her picture would be used for something like this.
Boeing would like to get in touch with the woman, company spokesman Scott Lefeber said. “We don’t even know if this woman knows she’s on the doors,” Lefeber said. “We’d like to notify her.”
Meanwhile, in news about the goings-on inside the factory, Boeing announced Tuesday that it had delivered 90 commercial jets during the first quarter of the year. That was a 28 percent increase over last year’s first quarter, when the company delivered 70.
Production of Everett-built jets was up across the board. Boeing delivered 17 777s, up from seven; four 747s, up from three; and three 767s, an increase from the one it delivered in the same period last year.
As production has ramped up, so has hiring. Boeing doesn’t report employment numbers specifically for Everett, but statewide its workforce has grown 12 percent over the past year.
Boeing reported 63,570 workers on the payroll in March, an increase of 728 over February’s total and up from 56,534 in March 2005.
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
Herald file photo
Boeing Co. officials are seeking the identity of the woman who is pictured on the mural at the compan y’s Everett plant.
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