Children’s Dreams
Soar High On Airship

By Amy Bentley-Smith
Features Editor

In a hanger near the Long Beach Airport, a plain white blimp is serving as the canvas for artwork painted by thousands of children.

Crews are adhering the last of the panels on the ship this week in preparation for its first official flight next Wednesday. When it takes off, the Ameriquest Soaring Dreams Airship will become the largest project to date of Los Angeles nonprofit Portraits of Hope, which partnered with Ameriquest Mortgage Company on it.

Portraits of Hope organizes large-scale public art installations that also have the role of being therapeutic art projects for children and adults who are seriously ill, are physically disabled or have other disadvantages. Founders Ed and Bernie Massey have said they started the organization in 1995 to give individuals who have little hope a sense of pride and joy in being a part of something colorful and lively that hundreds of thousands of people will see.

Past projects have included the Tower of Hope in Beverly Hills, a 165.4-foot tall structure that was covered in the organization’s signature flower logo. A similar design covered every square inch of a DC-3 that was flown during the centennial celebration of the flight at Kitty Hawk.

The airship project is three times the size of the DC-3. Work on painting 40,000 square feet of canvas panels began last fall. More than 6,000 children in pediatric care facilities, youth groups and after school programs in California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona were involved in the painting process.

Installation of the thousands of panels onto the body of the airship began this month in Long Beach. Slowly the airship has been transformed into a brightly colored series of geometric shapes, vaguely reminiscent of the “Partridge Family” bus.

People in Long Beach can get a sneak peek at the blimp Monday and Tuesday when it makes test flights over the city. Wednesday it will have an early take off from Long Beach to Santa Monica, where it’s official first launch will take place at the Santa Monica Pier at 11 a.m. From there it will tour the country, hovering (one of only two blimps that can hover) over a variety of sporting events and offering rides to children who were not able to participating in its painting.