The Aerospace Museum project: Amelia & Friends Revisited

California and Sacramento area aviation heroes, then and now.

This wonderful project is picking up speed. I had a terrific meeting with Karen Jones about our mutual vision for the new mural. I thought about creating the new painting at scale and then reproducing it digitally on a space-age type substrate like Dibond, but honestly, I just don’t feel it.

I might be tired of spending so much time sitting, either at an iPad or Mac when I used to run around a studio or a site all day. Now I force myself to jump on a spin bike or go for a walk. Or cut time to go kayaking.

So I’ve come up with a compromise. I’m going to paint on another tech substrate with a smooth surface. I still get the control, feeling and experience of making a real painting, but such a smooth surface is entirely different from the canvas of the original mural. It’s also rigid, in 4x8’ panels, not canvas which absorbs and stretches.

And I can do justice to the various gorgeous metals in these early engines.

In the reinterpretation of the old mural, quite a few original figures will be replaced by heroes since 1940, including those in WWII like the Tuskegee Airmen and their iconic plane, the Red Tail P51. This group flew in and out of McClellan, and in fact, I went to elementary school with the son of one of the maintenance (I think) crews.

Some of the female pioneers like Ruth Elder, Bobbi Trout, and Jackie Cochran will be replaced and/or represented by the famous “99s.”

The flamboyant Roscoe Turner and his pet lion, Gilmore, will not be included. While a very cool pet then, not so cool now, though I’m pretty sure Gilmore had quite the life. Could Turner have rivaled Cruise in Top Gun, then and now? Relatively, I’m sure.

to be continued…