The Emerging Veteran Artist Movement Assembled Creative Exhibitions of Performance, Sculpture and Images, on Display through the Summer of 2019 in Chicago.
Consider the wolf. Monster, majestic killer, foe to farmers and bison, friend of the birds for the fauna preserved by hunting, a wolf changes the environment. Marine veteran Joseph Lefthand paced, explaining his artistic practice, eyes closed, after showing video of wolves on a hunt. The strength of his voice filled the room with the sense of a performance artist living supremely in his head, asking how do we reckon the hunger of the wolf?
The demons and angels raised by war and punishment appeared throughout the performances and artworks shared during the first weekend of May at the Veteran Art Summit. Through a series of abstract performances, philosophical presentations, interpretive dances, displays of sculpture and images, and ASMR inducing rituals, the emerging Veteran Art Movement gathered offline for the first time since Aaron Hughes and Kevin Basl began its formation in 2018.
About 50 veterans who have been studying art at institutions all over America gathered to exchange ideas, disciplines and practices that they spent years refining. The dialogue continued throughout the summer at the Chicago Cultural Center, DePaul Art Museum and the National Veteran Art Museum, where artists and military veterans grappled with questions of where to draw order from chaos, how to make meaning out of apparent disaster, and what is sacred.
Is language sacred? What is art and what is art therapy? Why do we go to war? Whether the U.S. military deploys to the Middle East, Nicaragua, Vietnam, or most recently to the border with Mexico, any mission might be defined like a story—given a time, a place and energy. While the first two elements are strategic and physical, the third involves the arts and humanities. The third element (energy) defines the sacred. It is the chambered bullet. There is a trigger. Pull it, and what happens next is nebulous, a matter of practice, aim and a definite target.
Amber Hoy’s contributions on the first day of the summit focused on framing. Throughout the weekend she noted the styles, software and hardware that artists use. As most media shifts into digital realms, hopefully making our lives less cluttered, place and presentation still decide how our artworks get noticed.
At the DePaul Art Museum, observing the first ever museum display of Bob Ross paintings, Hoy pointed out how he had avoided the topic of his Air Force service throughout his art career. The only overt traces from his military experiences in his work are the snowy Alaskan mountains he often recreated. These he saw for the first time at one of his last duty stations. She said he’d been a drill sergeant, and chose a career in painting afterwards because he never wanted to have to raise his voice again.
Alicia Dietz, Waafa Ballil, and Drew Cameron launched one of the more nebulous projects of the weekend, with ambitions that circumnavigate the globe. As Iraq rebuilds in the wake of wars that have been percolating throughout The Middle East for more than a century, artists and intellectuals remember The House of Wisdom.
In medieval times Baghdad marked a central point in international trade routes. Maybe the centralization of relics, the city’s wealth, its libraries made it a target for the Huns a millennia ago. Though we’ve evolved far beyond medieval technology, it’s worth remembering the foundations of our ideas and also human capacity for depravity. As China rebuilds the Silk Road, the Combat Paper Art Exchange employs the ancient art of paper making to connect artists across hemispheres.
Gathering around a table made by Alicia Dietz, a former helicopter pilot, participants learned the first steps in making Combat Paper. Detatching buttons and seams from old military uniforms, cutting the cloth into small squares, twenty or so veterans clustered in groups. Focused on the task at hand, stories began flowing freely, and the verberations from their voices floated out into the either, dissipating.
Galleries in the Chicago Cultural Center featured a pottery making area, with mugs by Ehren Tool (https://studiopotter.org/ehren-tool). Posters from the anti-war movement of the aughts, commemorating veterans who placed their bodies and experiences on the line at odds with the invasion of Iraq, and among those depicted was Jeff Key who came out as gay after returning from a deployment. Soon after doing this he was discharged.
Eric Garcia created an exhibit at the DePaul Art Museum, and released a new book of visual artworks called Drawing on Anger. He also talked about a video game that he is illustrating. The game follows the journey of a soldier returning from war and navigating the VA system. His more recent work considers how we welcome veterans back from war, especially career soldiers.
The summit included exhibits at the National Veterans Art Museum. Ken Neilson made several videos documenting the events of the weekend, which you can check out on YouTube:
Fanny Garcia took the cover photo for this article at the National Veterans Art Museum (NVAM) Veteran Art Summit, held in Chicago May 3 - 5, 2019. As part of the inaugural NVAM Triennial, the Art Summit brought some 50 veteran artists from around the country together to share art, ideas, participate in hands-on workshops, and celebrate a growing community. The photo is part of a photo essay published by the Emerging Veteran Art Movement on July 1st, 2019.