You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Exhibit: Finding Home’ category.
Have a look at our online art gallery by clicking on the image above. In this curated exhibition of art on the experience of returning home from war and on war itself, by veteran, soldier and civilian artists, you’ll find artwork by more than 30 artists.
The Combat Paper Project was formed to help veterans cope with war experiences. It’s based out of the Green Door Studio in Burlington, Vermont. Their processes include making paper out of old uniforms to then create art on them as well as other creative outlets to connect to fellow veterans. They have exhibits and workshops available to further expand their knowledge as well as connect on a more national level with others (e.g. IVAW and the Warrior Writers Project). The Combat Paper Project is a collaboration initiated by Drew Matott and Drew Cameron, involving war veterans, activists and artists.
Read more about how the Combat Paper Project was conceived and their ties to the Warrior Writers Project is this article in Truthout.
-
- Healing
-
- We Are Still Here
-
- Vortex
Combat Paper is made using uniforms worn while on tour during war. The uniforms are cut into pieces, cooked and macerated in a machine to make paper pulp. The pulp is then formed into paper sheets. Combat Paper has been used to make broadsides, books and personal journals, and the base for other printing processes. Veterans use the transformative process of papermaking to reclaim their uniform as art and begin to embrace their experiences as a soldier in war.
See how a uniform of an Iraq veteran is being turned into ‘combat paper’:
Through ongoing participation in the papermaking process, combat papermakers are attempting to progress from creating works specific to their military experiences to expressing a broader vision on militarism and society. The work reflects both the anger of the past and hope for the future. Through this collaboration between civilians and veterans, a much-needed conversation is generated regarding our responsibilities to the returned veteran and an understanding of the dehumanizing effects of warfare.
The story of the fiber, the blood, sweat and tears, the months of hardship and brutal violence are held within those old uniforms. The uniforms often become inhabitants of closets or boxes in the attic. Reclaiming that association of subordination, of warfare and service into something collective and beautiful is our inspiration.
~ Drew Cameron, co-founder Combat Paper
The artists from the Combat Paper Project represented in the Odysseus Project art exhibit were: Jennifer Pacanowski, Eli Wright, Jon Turner and Drew Cameron. Poet, journalist and Vietnam vet Jan Barry (he also has a blog) and Drew Mattot, co-founder of the the Combat Paper Project, also contributed to the work on display.
Read more about Combat Paper, upcoming workshops and view the gallery on their website.
You can also watch a clip of Sara Nessons documentary film about the Combat Paper Project here.
Since 2007, the Combat Paper Project has been featured in numerous articles. Jan Barry wrote a thoughtful piece called Culture Warriors and Scars & Stripes is a perceptive news report in The Boston Phoenix. See the Combat Paper Project website for more news and links.
This work consist of 9 lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Each of the lanterns has 4 pictures that depict the moment in which, in the midst of the Colombian armed conflict, families of disappeared persons receive a ‘present’: the remains of their beloved ones in caskets after not knowing their whereabouts for years. The installation has audio that emphasizes the failure of language – a moment of speechlessness – in these situations.
Artist James O’Neill on Sofia Botero:
Her new work examines the violence in her native Colombia. She explores the unspoken, barbaric world where people disappear only to be found in mass graves years later. Their loved ones are left without any answers, virtually ignored by the media and the society at large. In this latest effort we are presented with a grouping of lanterns suspended from the ceiling. Though they are reminiscent of Japanese luminaries, instead of being decorative, they display photographs of the few families lucky enough to have their loved ones’ remains returned to them in small child-sized coffins. In bizarre ceremonies that otherwise could be mistaken for a wedding or any other happy social occasion, we witness the living receiving their dead. These images take on a ghostly feel as they have been partially veiled with vellum on which the coffins are hand colored to look like gifts. Botero humanized the unthinkable through the documentation of this ritualized ceremony. Her work brutally asks the question – how does a mother carry on when her son vanishes without a trace?
Sofia Botero received her BFA in Fine Art in Bogotá, Colombia. Currently she is pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She had solo and group shows in Colombia and the USA. See more work by Sofia Botero on her website.
-
- Cling Clink
-
- Eye Sea
-
- Gimme More
Earlier this year Cathy Wysocki’s pieces filled the main gallery of the Harwood Art Center in Albuquerque. The exhibit showed a selection of works from the series Poisoned World -from the 3 Poisons in Buddhism (greed, hatred, and ignorance). Wysocki began the series in 2006 inspired by ‘rampant greed and consumption, an illegal war raging on, blinding self-absorption and subsequent complacency’. She was compelled with an unapologetic fury to address these issues of the suffering world in her work.
These paintings are from my current series Poisoned World. It is my intent to create images and objects to reflect upon the proliferation of greed, hatred and ignorance and their devastating results. War is the dominant toxic issue in these paintings.
I believe art can affect social and political change. It is my hope to engage the audience in a visual dialogue raising awareness to these urgent human concerns.
Read interviews with Cathy Wysocki on The Harwood Blog and Red Ravine.
You can keep apprised of Cathy’s works by following her on Flickr.
Apocalypse Still is the creation of Boston artist Shaun Maclean Marrow. The painting is over a 100 meters long, pictorially embodying Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 cinema classic Apocalypse Now.
Shaun Maclean Marrow:
The world seems to be involuting upon itself in crisis. Apocalypse Now was Francis Ford Coppola’s utilization of Hollywood as a platform to show ‘the horror, the horror’ of war and the emotional toll of inner demons created by the powers that be. Apocalypse Still is a 100m (or more) painting of his movie, it uses installation to support its ‘horrors’, and movement to speak the words a painting cannot. It is already being painted, the idea of painting a film (time) is something that is warned against in the world of paint.
-
- 50 some odd feet.
-
- Sketch, Dinner for the colonel. Ink.
-
- Detail of Sketch. Ink, gouache.
-
- Sketch, study of the “Deadly Dance” scene in “Apocalypse Now”. Ink.
-
- Detail of Sketch. Ink, gouache.
-
- Sketch. Studying Kurtz. Ink, charcoal.
-
- Sketch, closeups, and whiskey glass study. Ink.
-
- Frost on the painting in the morning.
-
- The first 5 feet.
-
- Frost on painting (detail).
-
- Frost on painting (detail).
-
- Frost on painting (detail).
Critique by Ariel Radock: …Systematically offering numerous parallels within our own society, Mr. MacLean Marrow provides us with an insight into his own voracious appetite in representing a subject that transcends time and human complexity. Apocalypse Still is an outward manifestation of our innermost torments. Willingly, or perhaps in some cases unwillingly, we are forced to confront abhorrent horrors and are simultaneously repulsed and drawn to numerous attributes within this project. We are thus presented with a masterful rendition not only of a turbulent emotional journey but also a haunting visual one as well.
Hearts of Darkness: A Painter’s Apocalypse is a short documentary chronicling the development of the art installation Apocalypse Still.
See more recent work by Shaun Maclean Marrow on his blog.
Artist Heidi Blackwood has been working on project DoD since 2001. The project is called DoD for the date of death list, which is published by the Department of Defense.
-
- DoD – March 5, 2007
-
- DoD – March 5, 2007 (detail)
-
- Dod – March 20, 2007 (detail)
-
- DoD – March 20, 2007
In the first two world wars we were called upon as a nation to knit socks, surrender silk for parachutes and pot metals for artillery. These sacrifices were done with a great sense of national pride and a belief that we were liberating the world from tyranny. I wanted to remind our nation and myself of the personal sacrifices we are making as families and citizens on a daily basis for interests we may or may not understand or support.
Women have been asked many times throughout history to do hand work in the name of a cause. As my daily reminder, I have chosen to hand embroider the names of all United States soldiers lost in Operation Enduring Freedom and The Iraq War. These names are chain-stitched onto the front page of the New York Times alphabetically on the day they died. The soldiers that are lost while serving in OEF are embroidered in a light green. The soldiers lost during The Iraq War are embroidered in dark green.
DoD is an on going project that will stretch from Sunday October 7, 2001 through the undetermined time of our involvement in the Iraq War and Operation Enduring Freedom. DoD is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts organization. The work shown in this blog post was on display during the Odysseus Project Art Exhibit: The Hidden Costs of War in 2010.
From the establishment perspective, Jack Wolfe was one of the most promising young artists of the 1950’s. The renowned art historian Meyer Shapiro called Wolfe’s work ‘significant for the history of 20th century American art.’ However, largely for personal reasons, Wolfe stopped showing in commercial galleries and withdrew from the art scene. Jack Wolfe continued to paint (every day) in his studio in Stoughton MA, until his death in 2007.
Wolfe painted Nam – America, What Are You Doing?! in 1972, at the height of the grassroots anti-war movement. He used images taken directly from the media coverage of the day. Thus every figure represented is a portrait of someone real, such as the now famous figure of a girl running down the street with her body in flames from napalm bombs, or a group of victims from the massacre at My Lai.
-
- Nam, left panel
-
- Nam, center panel
-
- Nam, right panel
-
- Nam, detail 1
-
- Nam, detail 2
-
- Nam, detail 3
-
- Roxbury Portrait left panel
-
- Roxbury Portrait, center panel
-
- Roxbury Portrait, right panel
In 1967, Wolfe painted Roxbury Portrait, at the height of the civil rights movement. It portrays a group of neighbors near his studio on Tremont Street in Roxbury, a nearly all-black section of Boston at that time. A separate panel refers to the Vietnam War, and the practice of giving poor black men arrested for a crime such as drug possession a choice: Vietnam or jail. Most chose Vietnam and helped swell the ranks of troops there as government demand rose. Another panel reflects the difficulties of growing up in poverty with limited choices available for a better life. Alcoholism or drug use was often the result. A 12-year-old kid lies face down, the victim of street violence of one kind or another.
The director of the Joiner Center (Kevin Bowen) said the following about Nam and Roxbury Portrait:
Jack Wolfe’s canvases give us all cause to stop and think, not just about what we were doing in Vietnam but about what we are doing now as well. The toll war takes on civilians is something we tend to look upon only retrospectively. Yet in modern war they are the ones who suffer the majority of casualties. Jack Wolfe’s paintings show the human side, the painful side, of the landscape of war. His Roxbury paintings provide a powerful visual chorus to the costs of war at home as well. The paintings provide a sacred, human space for contemplation of war and its consequences.
The Jack Wolfe Studio is showing an extensive collection of artwork by Jack Wolf on their website.
Sara Nessons documentary Iraq Paper Scissors tells the story of veterans involved in the Combat Paper Project. Filming began at the Green Door Studio in Vermont where founders Drew Matott and Iraq Veteran Drew Cameron conceived the Combat Paper Project. In the spirit of community outside the military culture, veterans are cutting, beating and pulping their uniforms worn in combat into paper, books and art. Filmmaker Sara Nesson follows the veterans on a transformative journey as they confront their emotional wounds and redefine themselves as artists and writers. The film is currently in post-production and will be finished in 2010, here’s a clip:
Sara Nesson has been her own dp, editor, producer and director while making Iraq Paper Scissors. She has edited Stolen Childhoods, a prizewinning feature documentary on child labor for PBS, and edited on films for HBO such as Born into Brothels and Plastic Disaster. Last year she filmed Pilgrimage Thru Kham, which follows an expedition of health care workers throughout the forbidding Tibetan countryside to bring health care to nomadic Tibetans. Iraq Paper Scissors is Sara’s first independent film. Sara currently lives in Burlington, Vermont.
Veteran artist Aaron Hughes had 3 videos on display during The Odysseus Project art exhibit. You can read more about Aaron Hughes and watch Drawing for Peace in this earlier blogpost. The videos Ahmed and Mohammed grew out of relationships that Aaron Hughes developed with Iraqi children brought to New York for medical and prosthetic services through the Global Medical Relief Fund.
Ahmed Jabar Shareef is my friend and my guardian angel.
The children lining the roads of Iraq begging for food filled me with guilt, cynicism and anger.
Yet Ahmed who has been raped by this war (raped of his youth, raped of his body, raped of his sight, raped of his home, raped of his freedom) has no cynicism in his thoughts.
He gives love and trust without fear.
He grabs my hand and yells, “Run. Run please? Please, run.”
He is a nine-year-old boy who wants to run.
He is a nine-year-old boy who can’t run without someone to lead him. To stop him before the curb, before the tree, before the car that he cannot see.
He is a nine-year-old boy who wants to stomp his feet and twist to pop music.
He is a nine-year-old boy that teaches himself to play piano.
He is a nine-year-old boy that is a bird who knows no barbed wire.
He is a nine-year-old boy that is my guardian angel constantly reminding me that life is for love and trust, not cynicism and anger.
Ahmed Jabar Shareef is my friend.
-
- Post Modernist’ Life Jacket
-
- Post Modernist’ Life Jacket (detail )
-
- Approval
-
- Windup (detail)
-
- Windup
-
- Vent
Post Modernist Life Jacket (top left & middle) - This vest was created from old inner tubes, stitches with hemp and files with straw it is doubtful that it could save anyone with the exception of the corks – I see it as a dichotomy of the life jacket that saves no one- we are all drowning in war.
Approval (top right) – This piece created with collage materials, war ribbons, medals and ephemera. I was describing a language between two veterans – my father and myself. I now have a third veteran to add, my son. I filed the antique print boxes with visual languages of war and peace times.
Windup (bottom left & middle) - This is a found object (old suitcase) in which I have installed a small thumb board from a music box. The pin roll is Home Sweet Home. [The piece] is about traveling far from home.
Vent (bottom right) – Vent is a pressure release. Sometimes we feel like we fill up so much that all we need is release. For some people, letting it out is such a good feeling: venting. The vent is inserted into the rubber (inner tube) and filled with hemp, suspended in a steel frame.
The pieces on the top row were part of the Odysseus Project art exhibition.
Deborah Loughlin is a sculptor using varied alternative materials such as rubber, hemp, straw and soft woods. Her work has strong influences of island life and reflects that in the way she uses materials; recycled and reclaimed materials are specific to Deborah Loughlins work. She has varied interests in encaustic painting, ceramics and drawing, woodworking and metals. She is currently setting up a workshop series for artists at her historic home, the Dragonfly Farm.
