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Earlier this year the Houston abstract artist, Edgar Medina, was approached with a unique opportunity to create an art experience that would make a journey into space. Partnering with Blue Origin in their race to providing access to space for all, his art traveled aboard the recent New Shepard suborbital vehicle launch and safe return in West Texas.
In planning the “Mission Art” project, Medina explored inspirations from his local city of Houston and its connectivity to the long history of space exploration. Through his planning, he knew that he wanted to involve his volunteer work at the local children’s hospitals. Working with Children’s Memorial Herman Hospital, one Saturday in February he spent the morning painting with patients of the hospital. This work would be the first step in the project and the strips of canvas that Medina created with the children were sealed into a small metal box, and ready for their space journey.
On May 2nd, 2019 Blue Origin performed another test launch of its New Shepard system. Launching from the company’s West Texas facility, the rocket with Medina’s art aboard launched 65 miles above ground to break into the boundary of space. While high above Earth, space will play its hand in the art as the payload was subject to capsule movement, atmospheric pressure and micro-gravity freedom. The art continued to evolve as the capsule re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and successfully landed 10 minutes later.
For the final step in “Mission Art,” Medina traveled to the MAX 2019 Space Festival in San Francisco, May 16-19, 2019. Representing the connectivity of Art and Science, Medina retrieved the art from space and incorporated the canvas strips into a final work of art in a live painting experience at the closing night of the festival. The art was auctioned off in support of future MAX events.
Explore more “Mission Art” images here.
About Edgar Medina
Edgar Medina, a Houston abstract artist is originally from Cd. Mante Tamaulipas, Mexico. His originals have shown across the country at galleries in Chicago, New Orleans, Santa Fe and Houston. Medina has been a featured artist at Art Chicago, The Los Angeles Art Show, Art Santa Fe and Red Dot Miami. Last year, Edgar Medina originals helped to raise a substantial amount for Houston area charities including American Cancer Society, MDA, Victory Houston –Cattle Barron’s Ball, Foundation for Teen Health / Baylor Medina, JDRF and Tahirih Justice Center.
About Blue Origin
Blue Origin, LLC (Blue Origin) is a private company developing vehicles and technologies to enable commercial human space transportation. Blue Origin has a long-term vision of greatly increasing the number of people that fly into space so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system.
Contacts
Edgar Medina
edgar@medinaedgar.com
http://www.medinaedgar.com/