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“When I was a boy, I dreamed
of flying airplanes and I built models from balsa wood,”
says artist Alan Bean. “By the time I was in high school,
model airplanes of all shapes and sizes were hanging by thin
wires from the ceiling of my room. Airplanes were the last things
I would see before falling asleep at night. I dreamed of flying
higher than the highest cloud and faster than the fastest wind.
As I grew older, the dream grew stronger. It followed me as I
completed flight training, became a jet pilot flying off aircraft
carriers and when, as a test pilot and then as an astronaut,
I trained to rocket to the Moon. And in my painting, as I look
out over the ‘magnificent desolation’ of the lunar
surface, youngsters on Earth are building model rockets, dreaming
of flying higher than the Moon and faster than a shooting star.” |