The Story Behind Alan Bean's "Reaching for the Stars":

From the first American in space to the last to leave Skylab, 24 Mercury, Gemini, Apollo & Skylab astronauts Signed Reaching for the Stars designating it a significant historical document. This canvas is an exact 3-D replica of the painting by Apollo 12 Moonwalker Alan Bean, making it an incredible piece of art. As a single document, Reaching for the Stars is one of the most fascinating and important records of the exploration of space you could possibly own.

Five Mercury, eight Gemini, fifteen Apollo, six Moonwalkers and eight Skylab program astronauts all signed Reaching for the Stars. Such a record can never be created again. These are the men who visited the heavens at a time when the eyes of the world looked to space, the moon and beyond.

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Reaching for the Stars was created for the rotunda of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame as an inspirational mural. In his work of art, you can actually feel and see the vestiges of lunar exploration. Just as with his original, your canvas features Alan Bean’s trademark “moonprints” of authentic lunar boots, impressions from a core tube-bit used to collect lunar soil samples and marks from a hammer used to drive the staff of the American flag into the Moon’s surface.

Meticulously produced over a five months period, this textured canvas faithfully recreates the look and feel of the original painting—including the artist’s brush strokes—using a state-of-the-art combination of technological, artistic and craftsmanship skills. No other reproduction process compares in quality and value. The resulting fine art canvas is as close as you will come to owning the original work of art.

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Possibly not since the Declaration of Independence have two dozen great American heroes joined together to countersign and create such a historically significant work of art. In October, 1997, the astronauts came together for three reasons: to declare the expansion and renovation of the Astronaut Hall of Fame, to celebrate the induction of Apollo-era astronauts to the Hall (with Walter Cronkite as emcee) and to countersign Reaching for the Stars—specifically created to commemorate this once-in-a-lifetime event. the personal and individual signatures of each astronaut are written on the textured surface of this special, superior-quality canvas.

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In one sense, this is a painting of a universal astronaut, symbolizing everyone who flew in Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and Apollo-Soyuz. It also represents those who fly on space shuttles and will fly on a space station and on future missions only dreamed about at this time.

The astronaut is an emissary of us all, soaring away from our planet Earth and traveling as far as it is humanly possible to go with the technology available in our age. Although we haven't yet explored distant stars, we are moving inexorably in that direction. As the centuries unfold, humans will visit all the planets around all the stars that it will be possible to reach at that time, for this desire to explore our limits appears to a unique and magnificent characteristic of human beings.

But, in a broader view, this lone human figure not only symbolizes those of us in the astronaut profession, but all of us who possess a dedicated and adventurous spirit no matter what our interests or age. For we earthlings, we human beings, are the only life form that we know of that can dream, then plan and work together to achieve that dream. We are extraordinary in the universe in that our only limits are those we place on ourselves.

I painted this astronaut, this "star sailor", to represent the best in each of us, what we can accomplish, who we can be, if we will create the courage and determination to move in the direction of our dreams. It is up to each of us to keep reaching for our own stars and to understand that they are not light years distant but as close as our workplace, our home, and our family.

- Alan Bean