By his count, Dunne Dittman used to hoist as many as 400 pieces of luggage an hour working for a Southwest Airlines ground crew at Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

Do that for 19 years, and you would be excused if the never-ending carousel of duffles, suitcases and rolling pullmans flowed even into your off-duty thoughts. Dittman was fascinated by the old luggage, the bags battered by decades of miles and bearing faded stickers from Cairo, Moscow and other faraway locales. They promised the nostalgic story of a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby road movie.

Those vintage pieces of luggage inspired Dittman's vision for a work of art that is at once whimsical and striking -- a V-shaped flock of geese made from Samsonite suitcases. The sculpture now hangs high in the atrium of RDU's parking garage and has made the baggage-handler-turned-artist into an airport celebrity. Every month, about 100,000 RDU travelers will pass under Dittman's sculpture "Earlier Flight" as they hurry from the parking garage into Terminal A.

Dittman's installation of 15 geese crafted of stainless steel and vintage Samsonites has hovered overhead since April 16 and is expected to become a permanent piece of the airport's growing collection of public art. The airport people-movers feeding travelers in and out of the terminal limit opportunities for reflection, but the geese 30 feet overhead often provoke a reaction.

"The third day we're here installing it," Dittman recalls, "I'm in a hard hat, and this area's still all roped off. Within five minutes, this guy comes up and says, 'This is beautiful. Cool!,' " Then, not even five minutes later, another guy comes comes up and says, 'They paid [expletive] money for this thing?' "

Dittman laughed as he recounted his critic's profane review.

The sculpture, 56 feet long and 47 feet wide, conjures the image of a squadron of flying toasters from computer screen-savers gone by.

Yet the $56,000 project, commissioned by the airport, grants him the type of exposure many new artists can only dream about. How many other artists can say their installation will be seen by patrons from around the world?

Head in the clouds

Now 42, Dunne was the youngest of eight children growing up in Houston. His father was a NASA scientist who prepared biological experiments for space missions. His father also passed along some of his artistic leanings to Dittman, crafting nature scenes of elk and other wildlife out of cowhide.

From an early age, Dittman was fascinated by hawks and other large birds that cast shadows as they soared overhead.

"Geese to me are just so dramatic," Dittman said. "I know they're probably a problem to a lot of people, but I just love watching them fly. For me anyway, when they're in that V formation, and their necks are stretched out. It's so streamlined."

He tried to re-create scenes of their flight on leather, as his father did, and in wood carvings. But Dittman said he could never solve how to work with a wood's grains and anticipate how wood would respond and change with each carving.

After high school, art was limited to a hobby. His father had advised him early on to balance his art with a career. Dittman worked for about five years as a gofer for a mechanic friend who indulged his love of old cars. He worked several years with a NASA contractor that built flight simulators for the space program. But when the company moved to Binghamton, N.Y., Dittman said, he wasn't ready to leave Texas.

He stayed behind, worked for a bit with a family residential moving company before latching on with Southwest Airlines.

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