ABOUT ARTIST:

Dave Ginsberg is an analytical left-brained artist and a creative right-brained engineer whose passion and skill as an artist began to develop at an early age. He grew up in the presence of art. His father was an illustrator for the U.S. Air Force for much of his career. There were always magazines about art and graphics around the house, and many of them were aviation and space related. This fueled his interest in both technical and artistic aspects of aircraft design. His artwork combines his passions for spaceflight, astronomy, science, teaching, and the visual arts. Dave has been a member of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA) since 2016 and has served on its Board of Trustees. His artwork has been displayed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Seattle’s Museum of Flight, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Spacefest in Tucson, Arizona, The Art of Planetary Science exhibitions at the University of Arizona, the ASF Space Rendezvous in Houston, Texas, and the Digital Arts Festival in Redmond, Washington. Dave’s 16-foot tall solar system mural was on permanent display at Seattle’s Museum of Flight from 2007 to 2017. His work has been published in the IAAA Pulsar magazine and Dennis Jenkins’ book, Space Shuttle, Developing an Icon. Three of Dave’s creations have made trips into Earth orbit and back, having flown on space shuttle Atlantis, the Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft, and the International Space Station. Dave chose aerospace engineering for his livelihood, but has always maintained his interest in art and has continued to develop his skills and style. His thirty-four year career in engineering began in 1983. Dave worked in the field of conceptual and preliminary design of aircraft ranging from helicopters to commercial airliners. Early in his career, he became involved in developing software to assist in designing aircraft. It was while working on those tools that he was exposed to the capability of computers to create images. Now retired from engineering, Dave focuses his time on creating space art. His work is almost exclusively digital, though he would not describe it as computer generated. Using a Wacom Cintiq and pen, his approach is just as hands-on as it would be with traditional art media, but as Dave likes to say, the clean-up is a lot easier. 

SUBMISSION: Join the Crew of Spaceship Earth

The art deco style piece invites us to take an active role in taking care of our spaceship we call Earth.

This art deco style piece invites us to take an active role in taking care of our spaceship we call Earth. Our planet is a spaceship of amazing, yet finite, resources. “Join the Crew of Spaceship Earth” is a call for the people of our planet to cease acting like mere passive passengers on our ball in space and start taking an active role in caretaking for our fragile ecosystems to ensure the survival and prosperity of all living things. It calls us to step up and take responsibility for preserving, for our very survival, the life sustaining environment and resources upon which all life on this planet depends. For quite a while I’ve had a vision in my head for this artwork. Reading former astronaut Nicole Stott’s book “Back to Earth” inspired me to finally create it. Nicole’s book really spoke to me and helped to cement a lot of the thoughts and feelings I have had for a long time. Humans urgently need to change the way they treat our only home in space. Nicole presents three simple unifying lessons for us as Spaceship Earth crewmembers: 

• We live on a planet. 
• We are all Earthlings.
• The only border that matters is the thin blue line of atmosphere that blankets and protects us all. 

The time is long overdue that we open our eyes to what we have been doing to the life support systems of our planet. It is time to promote ourselves from mere passengers to active crew members who have the responsibility to make certain that our Spaceship Earth can continue to sustain life for the foreseeable future. My hope is that this artwork will serve as inspiration to do your part.