Common Themes

Last month, The Space Review interviewed space artist Les Bossinas, a now-retired concept artist who spent seventeen years working for NASA:

…he got a job for a contractor supplying art to NASA’s Lewis Research Center in Cleveland. He didn’t know much about aviation or space art, but he was a graphic artist, a journeyman artist, used to depicting things that other people described for him. Lewis’ engineers would come to him with their description of some new aircraft or spacecraft design. “They come in and tell you what they want,” he said. “It’s blue collar art.”

It’s an interesting read, check it out!

Today marks NASA’s 50th anniversary. It also marks the release of their space art collection in book form, NASA/ART: 50 Years of Exploration! Here’s to a great 50 years, and hopefully to another legacy-filled 50 years to come.

John Harris is an artist with a very recognizable style; the images here are book covers for Ender’s Game and Speaker For The Dead, both by Orson Scott Card. His website states:

John has now spent thirty years illustrating work by some of the best science fiction writers… Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Frederik Pohl, Orson Scott Card, Samuel R Delany, Ben Bova, Allen Steele, and many more.

Odds are, if you’re an avid science-fiction reader, you’ve seen some of John’s work. Check out his website for more information, and this excellent post for many more images!

I found these great covers here (via Brian.)

Album covers are strange and I don’t dig them up to post here nearly often enough… should I make this a more regular feature? Comments?

I first saw these strange little matchbooks on Retro Thing. Digging around Google resulted in more pictures, but little information, apart from what the article above states. The set of twelve matchbooks comes in a case, numbered as a limited edition item. The back of the case card lists all the technology RCA provided for the Apollo program, as seen below.

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