May 13 – 18, 2012 – Washington, DC (FREE)

Art Exhibitions/Creative Writing/Dance/Film/Papermaking/Performance/Theater

Veterans are changing the arts in America. The Arts, Military + Healing: A Collaborative Initiative is the first program to bring together the diverse individuals and groups involved in this transformation. A new generation of artists is responding to the traumatic experiences of prolonged war, creating haunting and memorable work. The AMH workshops and programs unite the military communities with veteran and civilian artists, arts organizations, schools, national cultural institutions, philanthropic foundations and military hospitals to raise awareness of the significance of the arts in the healing process.

FREE 5 DAYS OF ARTIST-LED WORKSHOPS for veterans, service members, and military families of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and for professional artists and art therapists who are now working, or hope to work within military communities.
Registration Required: May 2 for drama workshop; May 13 for other workshops.

FREE PUBLIC EVENTS open to all: art exhibition tours and reception, film screening, dance and theater performances.

DOCUMENTARY FILM PROJECT: Vets on Sets, Veteran Artist Program.

-”Groundbreaking contemporary war art written by soldiers on the front line in Afghanistan and made by official British War Artist Derek Eland in 2011″-

On July 15, 2003 Jim Pollock gave a presentation about the U.S. Army Vietnam Combat Art Program at the U.S. Library of Congress before the Library of Congress Professional Association (LCPA) Veterans Forum. Below is the opening statement given at the Mary Pickford Theater on that date that gives an overview of the U.S. Army Vietnam Combat Art Program. Contact Jim Pollock for information if your school or organization is interested in this same presentation.

In June 1966, the Army Vietnam Combat Artist Program was established, utilizing teams of soldier-artists to make pictorial records for the annals of military history. Artists interested in joining the program were asked to submit applications through the Army Arts and Crafts Program facilities nearest their unit. Applications were to contain samples of drawings, photographs of paintings and a resume. Selections were to be made by a civilian committee supervised by Army Art Curator Marian McNaughton. As originally initiated, the program was a joint effort of the Office, Chief of Military History, Center of Military History; the Adjutant General’s Office; and the U.S. Army Arts and Crafts Program with support from the Office, Chief of Information.

The first nine Combat Art Teams (CATs) operated in Vietnam. Typically, each team consisted of five soldier artists who spent 60 days of temporary duty (TDY) in Vietnam gathering information and making preliminary sketches of U.S. Army related activities. The teams then transferred to Hawaii for an additional 75 days to finish their work.

On March 17, 1969, due to the widespread interest shown by soldier artists and the impact of their work throughout the Army, the official name was changed from the VIETNAM COMBAT ART PROGRAM to the ARMY ARTIST PROGRAM. Coverage was expanded to include portraying the U.S. Army worldwide. All art created by soldier artists becomes a part of the U.S. Army Art Collection maintained by the U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, D.C.

The concept of the Vietnam Combat Art Program had its roots in WW II. In 1944, the U.S. Congress authorized the Army to use soldier-artists to record military operations. During the Vietnam era, the U.S. Army Chief of Military History asked Marian McNaughton, then Curator for the Army Art Collection, to develop a plan for a Vietnam soldier art program. The result was the creation in 1966 of the Vietnam Combat Art Program under the direction of McNaughton’s office. Her plan included involving the Army Arts and Crafts Program, then headed by Eugenia Nowlin. McNaughton’s office relied on Nowlin and her cadre of local Army Arts and Crafts directors to solicit applications from soldiers, which were forwarded to McNaughton’s office at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, where selection and team assignments were made. The U.S. Army provided logistics support as the teams of artists were sent to Vietnam and then to Hawaii.

What really set the program apart from other military artist programs was the use of on-duty soldiers on a continual rotating basis, ensuring a variety of styles and points of view. Most of the selected artist were young, not established, nor well known except to their family and friends. (The army also continued to contract with and send to Vietnam experienced civilian artists.)

Auggie Acuna, from CAT II (1966-67) illustrated how young and inexperienced these artist were when he wrote: “My ability was self-taught. I never took more than one art class in college. . . My exposure to my fellow team members and their various art techniques was a great learning experience for me. . . My artwork was spontaneous because I didn’t have any hangups brought on by any earlier (training). I didn’t tell my other team members that I had never had any formal art instruction, especially since I was Team leader. I just looked over their shoulders a lot and learned how to work with all types of medium.” Artists were allowed complete freedom as to subject matter and were encouraged to use individual and unique styles. Another former Vietnam combat artist was Phil Garner (CAT V 1967-68) who had been drafted. About his freedom to express himself as a soldier-artist he said, “As a military artist, I was allowed a great deal of creative freedom. And, of course, I didn’t have to support myself, so in some ways it was a much more liberal situation than what I was to find later as a freelance media contributor.” This was the essence of the program: Rotating teams of young soldier artists who, at times, risked their lives in the war-torn jungles and fields of Vietnam to record their experiences for the annals of Army history.

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-”At the age of 17, Eric Nevatie came to the U.S. as an immigrant from Finland in May of 1965, with aspirations of becoming a commercial artist. He didn’t speak English very much at all, and being surrounded by Finnish-speaking people in the Los Angeles area, he realised he wasn’t making much “head-way” in learning English. With his extensive background in the Finnish Merchant Marine fleet since the age of 14, he tried to join the U.S. Navy.

Eric Nevatie

The Navy wouldn’t take him due to his lack in English skills, however, the U.S. Marines didn’t have that problem since, where he was destined to go, there was more shooting than talking. Eric became the only Finn known in history to speak American English with a Vietnamese accent. His Platoon Leader (Lt. Jud Blakely) said that he spoke more Finnish than English. Also, Eric probably was the only man to be drafted by the Finnish Army while serving in the U.S. Marines, engaged in combat in Vietnam, but he stayed true to the Marine Corps instead, to the end.”-

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-”When North Korean forces invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, it set off three years of dangerous fighting. The US, along with 15 other United Nations members, came to South Korea’s aid in repelling the invasion. North Korean troops were driven back almost to the Yalu river, where Chinese troops flooded across and added their strength to the North. Russian aid and a few unpublicized MIG pilots turned the tide for s time and drove UN troops back almost to the original border separating the two belligerents. An armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, leaving the two Korean armies approximately where they had been at the beginning of the conflict. Oops, crossed swords once again with the music police. Music was Simon and Garfinkel singing “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” which was always considered a drug-oriented piece of music and was banned on several radio stations during the war. Now it has been replaced by “Alien Wasteland,” performed by D.C. Slater.”-

-”An artist has a vision of a memorial she is shown to create in a dream. This will honor the Lima Company of Ohio, in which 23 marines died in 2005. She is painting the individuals.

The Lima Company will be redeployed.

This artist is Anita Miller. Her paintings will be displayed on Memorial Day as eight canvases that depict 22 marines and a Navy corpsman. The display will run through Veterans Day in the Ohio Statehouse rotunda.

The display will be titled, The Lima Company Memorial: A Rememberance of Spirit & Choice. The canvases ( 8 foot by 6 foot) will be arranged in an octagon, which will surround its viewers as if they were actually in the company of those soldiers who sacrificed their lives.

Columbus Ohio’s ABC 6 noon news carried this story on March 18th, 2008. The broadcast included an interview with Miller and showed some of the paintings. She was also written up in the Columbus Dispatch on March 11, 2008 pg. B1.

For more information see:
www.limacompanymemorial.org

This video was taken while doing research about John Purdue, founder of Purdue University. It shows one of the log cabins near the place where the Purdue family lived in the early 1800s. John Purdue might have stayed in it. The cabin is in its original location northeast of Columbus, Ohio. It is approximately 16×22. The Purdue family, of 9 sisters and John, grew up in a one-story log cabin similar to this one in Pennsylvania.

Miller is one of the people who inhabit one of the old log cabins on the Purdue place.”-

Mumford has made 6 trips to Iraq between 2003 and 2008, emailing his drawings to artnet.com as a visual record of his experiences, and subsequently exhibiting them in numerous shows worldwide.

He published many of the drawings in Baghdad Journal, An Artist in Occupied Iraq, Drawn & Quarterly, 2005. A selection of his drawings is included in “The Storyteller”, an exhibition curated by Claire Gilman and Margaret Sundell for ICI now on view at the Art Gallery of Parsons The New School for Design in New York.”-

for more vistit: http://postmastersart.com/artists/steve_mumford/mumford.html

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-”CALVERTON, N.Y. — Calverton National Cemetery conducts a special ceremony for veterans who had no one attend their funeral. On the second Wednesday of each month the cemetery organizes a color guard and a flag-folding detail to give the deceased service members proper honors. Michael Picerno, Calverton National Cemetery director, estimates that 300-400 veterans are buried each year without friends or family at their service.”-

-”Excerpt from feature documentary Art in the Face of War. Visit www.artinthefaceofwar.com for details, film reviews, screenings & awards. Winner of the Special Jury Prize for the Newport Beach Film festival 2007 and the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Connecticut Film Festival, Oct 2006. Synopsis: Eight World War II artists/veterans recount their service experience and their use of art for journalism, as a tactical tool and to preserve their own sanity. Iraq comments are from the ‘extras’ section on the Art in the Face of War DVD.”-

-”Historically Memorials are commissioned after a war has ended. Sadly the conflict in Iraq continues. We chose to host a Memorial Competition while the war is in progress in order to view and share works of art that express the great upwelling of feelings and human emotion occasioned by this tragedy. The selection of work posted below is a sampling of the submissions that Art Cries Out received. Perhaps all of the work submitted -seen together- is a testimony to the depth, intensity and enormity of the outrage and anguish felt by so many. Art Cries Out is grateful to all who submitted.

Art Cries Out will continue to post submissions on the theme of war and subject of Iraq – if the war persists we will host another exhibition.”-

http://www.artcriesout.com/iraqwarmemorial.html

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This is what Jack Roy Tuner experienced two weeks after D-Day in World War II, when he played his trumpet with German snipers in the area.

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