Arts of War on the Web

The Springs Art Gallery, a veteran-friendly space in El Dorado Spring, Missouri, is running an exhibit that commemorates military service and highlights the issue of PTSD. It’s called “I am Vietnam,” and is made up of work created through art therapy by Jon York, a former Marine who did a Vietnam War tour in 1969-70. The exhibit consists of York’s paintings, photographs and poetry that have helped him deal with his PTSD.

“Painting has helped me gain control of my life again and helps me release those demons that controlled my life for so many years,” York said. “As veterans, we face battles every waking hour of the day. Creative therapy allows us to drag these thoughts out of our head, put them down as words, paintings and sculptures. Art can address potential solutions, reconciliation, and the power of the human spirit to overcome oppression and loss. This exhibition is the story of my Vietnam experience in creativity. By these paintings I hope to address the issues veterans face, coming back from war, the increased rates of PTSD in returning soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the increased rates of suicides.”

The exhibit will opened on November 14 and runs through January 16. For info, call 417-296-3659.

“Veterans of America,” an exhibit of the art work of a variety of veteran-artists, opened August 11 at the nonprofit Springs Art Gallery in El Dorado Springs, Missouri. The show, which will run through October 8, includes the paintings of Helen White (that’s her work, above), who served as a nurse in the Vietnam War, and whose work has been exhibited at the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in Chicago, among other places.

“The thing is, these artists have trouble finding places to display and sell their work,” White told the Nevada Daily Mail. “Art about war is nothing new; it’s been around for centuries; probably as long as there have been wars, there have been artists whose work had themes relating to war.”

The exhibit, which was supported by VVA Chapter 317 in Kansas City, Mo., contains an eclectic collection. “Many different media have been introduced, from paintings, vases, fiber art, books, slide shows, maps and woodwork,” said Ruth Cannady, the gallery’s coordinator. “The Springs Gallery has had a large amount of interest in the exhibition.”

The theme of the big, splashy feature article in the March 17 Washington Post Style section on the new exhibit, “May Lin: Systematic Landscapes,” running through July 12 at Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art, was the fact that the renowned artist was having her first show in the nation’s capital since 1981. That’s when her Vietnam Veterans Memorial design was unveiled.

Lin went on to design several other memorials and “monumental landscapes,” and the show is “her attempt to bring indoors” the work “that she has been doing for the past 15 years,” reporter David Montgomery wrote in the article.

Montgomery asked Lin about her famed reticence to speak publicly about The Wall. “She was busy processing the precocious success and controversy,” he said, referring to how young Lin was (a college junior) when she won the nationwide design contest, and the loud criticism of her abstract design from some quarters, “trying to figure out who she was as an artist. And she was working hard at her art–’obsessively,’ she says. Her instinct was, don’t look back, keep creating.”

Lin said she continues to have conflicting feelings about the experience. “It’s not bad memories,” she told Montgomery. “Let’s put it this way: I didn’t have a really nice time.”

“I do think I have this big white elephant right here,” she said, pointing to the area of the Memorial. “Like, ‘Oh, God, she did that, it’s so great. You know, this [other] stuff is crap.’ It’s going to happen.”

Lin said she was “desperately trying to move past the Memorial as fast as possible as an artist. I was trying to prove to myself that I could balance out my life in a different way. After the Vietnam Memorial, I don’t think you can prove it to the world to a degree that you would need to, so I’m just not interested.”

It’s “not that I don’t love the Memorial,” she said. “But you do feel it’s like this big galumphing elephant. And I think you move on. And yet, at the same time, it’s a big piece. It will always by my biggest piece and I’m very proud of it.”

She visited the Memorial while in D.C. with her husband and two daughters, something, Lin said, she likes to do at night. “It was really magical,” she said. “In a funny way, the popularity of it is a sign it’s working. But when you’re dealing with intimacy and connection, there’s something when you see it with a lot of people that’s different from when you see it on your own.”

“Saturday Night”

The evocative original painting that graces the cover of the current issue (September-October) of The VVA Veteran is the work of John Phelps (below), an artist and sculptor from Wyoming who is a U.S. Navy veteran of the Vietnam War. Phelps, who was born and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming, went to the University of Wyoming, then joined the Navy. After he returned from Vietnam, Phelps worked as a guide for elk and bighorn sheep hunters in Fremont County, Wyoming. He has lived in Dubois, Wyoming, for twenty-five years.

Phelps’ painting and sculpture hones in on the history of the Great American West, including the terrain, the fur trade, mountain men, the cowboy, ranching and rodeo. You can get a good look at his work at Phelps’ web site, www.johnphelps.com