"Jet Blue #14"

"Jet Blue" #14- This image was inspired by the Jet Blue emergency landing on September 22, 2005. This is an image that I really enjoy working on. It is a cross on a hill, overlooking the water. I made my first "Jet Blue" after the emergency landing of the plane that had its front landing gear stuck sideways. I was watching this on the news and the plane had been up in the air a few hours burning off fuel. It came time for the emergency landing, and right before the landing, the local anchor said "lets say a prayer for them." And he bowed his head and was silent for a moment, I said a prayer too. I had not prayed in a long time. The plane landed with lots of sparks, but everybody was safe. It happened right around the news hour and the channels carried it live while they gave the news. I’m not a huge religious person, but I did pray that day, and I hadn’t in a long time. And, who knows if the anchor was sincere or not. Anyway, that night I made this image, and I really enjoy sculpting it. It gives me a calming feeling when I work on it. This is the biggest one that I have done. The last thing that I do is sculpt the cross on it, I get nervous about doing it. If I screw it up I just have to start all over again.

AP Story:
LOS ANGELES — The airliner circled Southern California for hours, crippled by a faulty landing gear, while inside its cabin 140 passengers watched their own life-and-death drama unfolding on live television.
While satellite TV sets aboard JetBlue Flight 292 were tuned to news broadcasts, some passengers cried. Others tried to telephone relatives and one woman sent a text message to her mother in Florida attempting to comfort her in the event she died.
"It was very weird. It would've been so much calmer without" the televisions, Pia Varma of Los Angeles said after the plane skidded to a safe landing Wednesday evening in a stream of sparks and burning tires. No one was hurt.