So much has happened . . . where to begin

After finishing my drama therapy internship at the Institute for Therapy through the Arts I moved to Akron. Many changes in my life and the lives of my family. It's good to be back in the Midwest and back in the Buckeye state. It's true: Once a Buckeye, always a Buckeye!

I'm working at Freedom House, a shelter for formerly homeless veterans. I'm leading a stress reduction workshop series--my second of many more to come. I use all my skills as a drama therapist and incorporate playwriting, dance/movement, drawing, poetry, collage making, music, and more into the storytelling process that occurs in this group setting. I'm also privileged to help attend the flag raising and lowering outside the shelter at sunrise and sundown when I'm working as a housing specialist.

The Vet Art Project is also doing a weekly dance/movement program called BeatRoot at First Grace UCC in Akron. This is a "spiritual journey through movement" where participants come in and explore their feelings through movement inspired by different rhythmic patterns from around the world. We move for an hour--nonstop! Believe it or not you can, too.

The University of Akron is another venue for Vet Art Project programming. We'll be offering workshops for students as part of their Wellness Day program in late March and a program for faculty and staff from this and other area universities in early April.

I've also become a regular participant in Warriors Journey Home circles where veterans, family members, and people of strong heart gather to share in community stories of war and service. (Check out http://www.warriorsjourneyhome.com/)

Also Shianne Eagleheart and her Red Bird Center (http://www.redbirdcenter.org/) is a wonderful healing space that's opened to veterans and family members the last weekend of every month. There's time for sharing, storytelling, art, and healing lodges. And everyone has an opportunity to be refreshed and reconnected to the land and to their brothers and sisters.

There are grand people here in Northeast Ohio and this is a fine foundation to grow strong roots. Stay tuned for further updates as the Vet Art Project continues to transform all who participate in her programming.

It's been too long! News from the HomeFront of the Vet Art Project

Hello My Friends,
I cannot believe it's been so many months since my last blog post. I've been busy D O I N G instead of reporting on what I'm doing—my apologies, however, at my absence. Here's what I've been up to as I continue my training as a drama therapist:
—1 internship in Tucson, Arizona with One Sacred Nation Healing, a Wellbriety Program that uses Native American principles, laws, and values to teach others a program of wellness and sobriety
—1 internship in Evanston, Illinois with the Institute for Therapy through the Arts, working with creative arts therapists, drama therapists, and music therapists and 16 different population groups to get more hands-on training practice in drama therapy
—2 Grief Trainings with the Institute for Psychoanalysis, Chicago
—1 Creative Arts Therapy Workshop with the School of the Art Institute Chicago Art Therapy Program
—I attended the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference, Chicago
—1 Poetry Therapy workshop with Dr. Sherry Reiter (www.creativerightingcenter.com), Black Mountain, NC
—1 Warriors Journey Home Healing Retreat (forthcoming later this week), Red Bird Center, Cambridge, OH, and
—I will be appearing on a panel at a conference sponsored by Society for the Arts in Health Care (more to come on this) in October, Bethesda, MD
—and more to report in the weeks to come

My commitment to the project remains steadfast and will begin to grow more apparent in the months to come with upcoming announcements.
Vet Art Project Chicago continues to grow stronger with new programming the city colleges in Chicago
Vet Art Project Pittsburgh recently assisted at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games & at Stand Down Pittsburgh

And calls for programming and offers of support keep coming in from around the country.
Want to help? Send an e-mail to vetartproject@gmail.com
The Vet Art Project continues to be fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas so you can make a tax-deductible contribution. Just go to our Web site and click on the link on the home page.

In gratitude for all the stories and offers of support,
Lisa

News from Vet Art Project Seattle

Caroline Brown, Lead Artist, Vet Art Project Seattle

My name is Caroline Brown and I am currently the lead artist for Vet Art Project Seattle. December 6th marks our fifth workshop and I am in awe of how our process has unfolded so far.

I was inspired to pursue the Vet Art Project Seattle after learning of Lisa Rosenthal’s project in Chicago. I have an extensive background using the arts—particularly performance—as a tool to help individuals and communities express themselves as a means of healing and advocacy and have wanted to work with veterans for some time. I began researching programs that were set up to support veterans’ return to civilian life and ironically found the Vet Art Project Webpage the day after the February performance at the Chicago Cultural Center. I immediately contacted Lisa via e-mail to inquire about the idea of using the Chicago project as a model for a similar one in Seattle. Before I even left the coffee shop from where I was e-mailing, Lisa had left me a voice mail offering her full encouragement of my endeavor.

Lisa’s support has been instrumental in helping me get the Seattle project off the ground, particularly during the preliminary stages of planning and organizing. During our first phone conversation, Lisa answered all of my questions regarding how the Chicago project was shaped and immediately provided me with the project’s mission statement and logo. From there, she put me in touch with Soldier’s Heart Seattle, the veteran’s return and healing project based on the writings of Dr. Edward Tick. The director of Soldier’s Heart Seattle, Sally Jo Gilbert de Vargas, has since become one my strongest allies in promoting the project and helping me network within the veteran’s community.

As I began to research funding for the project, Lisa agreed to serve in an advisory role for a grant that I applied for and also provided me with a great bit of narrative for the application. We are lucky to have the wonderful Freehold Theatre serve as our project’s host and fiscal sponsor here in Seattle.

In addition to offering professional support and resources, Lisa also understands the personal challenges and triumphs that one can face in pursuing projects of this nature. She continues to be a wonderful sounding board and positive reinforcement for the process.

After seven months of networking, researching, grant writing and coordinating, the Vet Art Project Seattle held its first meeting between artists and vets in October. In just four short workshops, we created a safe space of trust and openness where veterans and artists alike are able to share, create, explore and learn.

I am extremely humbled by the risks that individuals are willing to take outside of their comfort zone and I am inspired by the work that is being created through the partnerships between artists and vets.

I emphasize the term learn because even though it is very clear that there is no political agenda for the project, conversations still inevitably arise around individuals’ different experiences, opinions and perspectives. The workshops provide us with a safe environment where extreme disparities can finally be shared, witnessed and embraced rather than ignored or disrespected.

I have great hopes for the Vet Art Project Seattle and where the creative process will lead us over the course of the next three months. Week after week, our community continues to grow as new participants join and dialogues continue to build. I am confidant that we will continue to embrace the diversity of human experience amongst our group and collectively build a creative context where it may be healed, celebrated and honored.

I think I can speak on behalf of our project here in Seattle when I say that we are very proud to be recognized as Chapter Two in the many Vet Art Projects that are being pursued nationwide.

To learn more about our upcoming performance in mid-March or to join our mailing list, please send an e-mail to Caroline.e.brown@gmail.com or visit our Web page at http://web.mac.com/c.e.b/iWeb/Site%202/Vet%20Art%20Project%20Seattle.html.

Experiencing Veteran’s Voices: The Synergy of Community

By David Faigin, M.A., Vet Art Project Clinical Consultant

One of the most wonderful outcomes I’m seeing from the Vet Art Project are the ways in which community is building around the project in a synergistic way. This synergy is bringing veterans into the project, connecting veterans to artists, and connecting the whole project to other groups and organizations in the community. Synergy is what brought me to the project in the first place; offering me a way to continue to work with veterans and their families in the community, as well as blending my work in community psychology and my background in theatre and the arts.

The most rewarding thing about my involvement in the project so far by far is witnessing the positive impact it’s having on the veterans who participate. Strength, encouragement, connection, and community are blossoming out of the partnerships and artistic activities taking place. Veterans, their children and supporters, artists, therapists, veteran advocates, politicians and community members are offered a way to meet and interact that can only occur in this sort of grass-roots activity. Having worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs and hearing from veterans first hand, I am now well aware of what the various medical, therapeutic, and veteran service organization settings have to offer veterans and their families. The efforts being put into these settings and the help that they offer is critical, but I can say with great certainty now, the Vet Art Project is offering something unique, and just as critical.

My involvement so far in the Vet Art Project has allowed me to lead workshops and community conversations, share my input on growing the community, and to perform at the recent NIU event embodying one story of the veteran participants. The Vet Art Project’s partnership with the Remy Bumppo Theater Company allowed me to share my perspective on veterans issues as they relate to the acclaimed performance of Heroes that is currently running at the Greenhouse Theater. The company’s yearly salon involved a discussion of all the plays in Remy Bumppo’s ’09-’10 season and I was the panelist invited to discuss Heroes. The panel was a lively discussion and an opportunity for me to address the themes and ideas presented in Heroes as well as the Vet Art Project and the impact that experiencing veterans’ voices can have on our communities. I highly recommend the performance, which follows three WWI veterans as they navigate their friendships, and search for connection and meaning in their later years. It runs through November 29.

Here’s a link to Remy Bumppo and “Heroes”: www.remybumppo.org

Here’s a link where you can hear the whole panel discussion that took place on Sept. 14 about all three plays: www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=37198

This weekend, Sunday Nov. 22, the Vet Art Project’s partnership with Remy Bumppo gets even more exciting, as they join us for a Warrior Poetry reading, featuring many veterans sharing their own words, after the Sunday matinee of Heroes. This is sure to be a powerful event as we see veterans and professional actors share the voices of many generations of warriors.

Personal stories have the power to transform identity, relationships, and the whole community. This project is offering an open platform for veterans’ stories to do just that. Transformation can bring new understanding, healing, and reintegration. I look forward to witnessing the ways the Vet Art Project will continue to connect veterans to themselves, their loved ones, and their communities.

Art is wide enough, big enough, and strong enough to hold any narrative, any pain. It has the power to safely hold the warrior and his/her experience simultaneously. It has the power to open up all of us to hear one another more deeply. I know. I am seeing it happen.

Artistic Impressions

The Museum... was very difficult for me to be in. I felt a sense of awe and then a sense of not belonging. When I walked into the Museum and saw the dog tags hanging my heart sank and I immediately put up a wall. I chose to view it as if I was a foreigner looking at an important cultural artifact such as a pot or a doll. "That must've meant something to someone at sometime I thought." I found that I looked at the blank walls more than I did the art. The blank spaces, made up of concrete and shadows, put me at ease. "What's that about?"

When the rehearsal started I looked for any excuse to leave the room.

I ran to the car.

Went for a smoke.

Used the bathroom four times.

Passed blank spaces frequently.

Coming back from the bathroom, I wanted to place my hand on the cement wall. I could tell it would feel cold. I didn't. Scared someone would see me and be all, "Whatever." So I went back in the elevator. Pushed the warm plastic button: 3rd floor. Watched them rehearse the play. Went home and was numb. That evening when I was all alone I cried. The wall I put up fell. And what I saw were those same blank walls.

I called my dad and I told him to not say no, but to think about what I was going to say. He listened. I asked him if he wanted to go to this retreat for Vets that was happening in Denver this summer with this great lady playwright I met named Lisa. He said, "#$^%, no." I said, "Hold on a sec, I don't need the answer now. I just want you to think about it. Stay open. We'll talk about it again when I come up for Christmas." There was a pause. The cold cement. The silence. Then he said,"Alright Kid, I'll stay open."

I don't know if he will go. I don't know if he will leave the mountain he lives on for that length of time. I do know for right now until christmas, I can see some of him on that wall.

Written by Dana Lynn Formby, playwright of Armed with Peanut Butter, impressions after her Open Rehearsal at the National Veterans Art Museum, Chicago, preparing for the Vet Art Project Chicago's Veterans Day performance at DePaul University.

Note: The retreat to which she refers is a Soldier's Heart Retreat with Edward Tick, author of War and the Soul. Details on this and other retreats are available at soldiersheart.net

DoD & VA Open to Vet Art Project Mission as it Aids Resiliency

The Vet Art Project was warmly received at the recent DoD Force Health Care Conference in NM. I'm working on making this interest become programming and growing opportunities f to hear the stories of our veterans and their family members!
Next up Soldier's Heart Retreat in Racine, WI with Edward Tick and then onto the DoD/VA OEF/OIF Conference in Las Vegas. Onward and upward!

Do-ing, Not Writing!

Hello Friends,
We here at the Vet Art Project have been very busy over the past month. We've been busy DOing, not writing. We've . . .

Done a Mapping Workshop at the Chicago Cultural Center, led by psychologist Jan Johnston

Appeared at the Sharing the Power Mental Health Conference to talk about the healing power of art and the Vet Art Project

Performed "The Journey of a Soldier" and led a talkback with veterans in the audience & Christina Reddington offered a creative arts workshop on telling stories with pictures instead of words

Presented a program, including art created in the project, at a DePaul University Veterans event talking about the Vet Art Project and finding ways to work with the veterans at DePaul

And we've had many meetings building our network of support here in Chicago and around the country!

Vet Art Project Participates in Chicago's Memorial Day Parade

Thanks go to Will Schmutz, Director & Community Liaison on the Commission on Human Relations and Mayor Daley's Advisory Council on Veterans Affairs, for helping to make this possible. We met many wonderful people on this day!

Milwaukee Performances Support Dryhootch.org

Over this last weekend the Vet Art Project was invited by our dear friend Bob Curry of Dryhootch.org to come to Milwaukee and perform at the Reclaiming Our Heritage event on the historic VA grounds. We knew this was a big event but I had no idea what a huge experience this would be. The shows went off without a hitch. F. David Roth, Curtis Jackson and Dave Strong gave voice to the stories of Vietnam veterans, and others. The honor and respect they gave these words was powerful and moving. I witnessed connections made among actors, veterans, family and friends that stole my breath. So much was communicated with a simple embrace, handshake, and thank you between artists and veterans. This connection, the sharing and the attempt to understand, is why we were at the event and why we do what we do.

Other notes from the day. . .
* Soldiers from wars going back as far as the Civil War to today were represented. I almost tripped over a few hoop skirts while touring the various eras, but given my klutzy track record this comes as no surprise.
* I was unable to visit the library but I have on good authority (Bob Curry himself) our good friend Jeanine Hill-Soldner has several paintings on display (Yeah Jeanine!).
* Special visits from Curtis’s parents—lovely people!—and the wonderful Bob Breuler and Suzy Petri came by after visiting another historic venue Ten Chimneys!
* It was a great day, the weather was lovely and company was extraordinary.

I would like to thank you all for everything that you do.
Jessa Carlstrom, Vet Art Project Co-Lead Artist

The Good News at 6:14 a.m.

The excitement and the work rattled my bones awake this morning. Again. I walked up to my Studio to get some work done, to meditate, and hopefully soon, to get more than 4 hours of sleep. Before beginning my journey back to bed I checked the DCA Box Office for the number of tickets available to the Vet Art Project performance this Monday. Two days ago the DCA Theater staff offered us the magnificent venue of Preston Bradley Hall because we sold out the maximum number of seats that would fit in the Studio Theater space (99). Two days ago the set up of 200 seats showed 99 were available. Yesterday it hovered around 60-seats remaining. Now, at this early morning hour, there are 34 seats remaining. The word is spreading. The people are coming. We will have a fine and large community gather together to witness the stories.

I'm so proud of all of us--the veterans, the artists, the community members who have gathered together over the past month to witness the stories of those who serve us in the armed forces. We gather in their name. We gather in our name. We gather together to remember those we have lost and to honor those we are fighting not to lose. This is testament to people waking up and realizing that war affects us all and it the warriors who will lead us to peace if we give them our time and attention. We are a community. And we are growing ever stronger. Now I can hear the drums calling us not to war, but to peace. Now.

First Night Reflections--on last Tuesday

The artists' orientation began the Vet Art Project with nearly 40 artists sharing different stories and reasons for getting involved in the project. The room felt electric yet vast, widened by our various journeys to this place and time. Yet when Bob and John, two Vietnam Veterans began to share their stories of time lost and challenges they've faced due to PTSD, and how they were saved because of the kindness and support of family members and friends, we came together as one community. We gather to bare witness to these truths, to help strengthen these voices, to create art to express these feelings and realities. We realized we gathered for one purpose: to support our veterans in their truth by bringing these stories to the community and connect us all by how we are affected by war.

In Their Own Words: Veterans Day Program plans are set!

Friends,

I hope you'll come out and show your support for our veterans and current arms services personnel, not by shopping, but by truly honoring their service to our country. We, the collective of artists affiliated with the Vet Art Project and American Theater Company, have come together to honor our troops. Using original writing submitted over the years to the National Vietnam Veterans Museum, we have recreated the journey of a soldier. This will be a staged reading performance in the lobby of the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum. I hope you'll join us.

Tuesday, November 11th, 6 p.m.

National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum

1801 S. Indiana Avenue

Chicago

312.326.0270

Many New Partners, Many New Programs

The Vet Art Project continues to expand with more people becoming involved at all levels. And you can, too. Please view the list of upcoming events to see how you can make a difference in your own life and the life of a veteran.

Events: 2008-2009 Exciting Schedule

Please click here for our full Vet Art Project Event Schedule for 2008 and 2009