Vet Art Project Is on the Road!

I know it's been a long time since I last posted but that's because I've been busy working on all things Vet Art! Here some highlights of upcoming events and plans with more to come:
--Awarded a Residency to write the Vet Art Project Book at Blue Mountain Center (an artists retreat in upstate New York)
--Vet Art Project Phoenix launches in August 2010
--Vet Art Project Milwaukee begins! [more details soon]
and
--Vet Art Project Pittsburgh begins! [more details soon]
--Experiential workshop at the Department of Defense Force Health Protection Conference in August 2010 ("The Vet Art Project as a Tool for Transformation for Veterans, Family Members, and Civilians to Build Stronger Integrated Communities")

Vet Art Project Santa Fe L A U N C H E S!!!

Lin Daley and Lisa Rosenthal will be launching the first weekend of programming for Vet Art Project Santa Fe January 23 & 24. We are offering storytelling workshops that use collage, movement, improvisation, and poetry/prose (writing); a witnessing workshop for community members; and a showing of new art created in the project. Details at http://www.vetartproject.com/usa.html or e-mail vetartprojectsantafe@gmail.com. We hope to see you there! Peace through Art, 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

Vet Art Project Phoenix Is Born!

Hello My Friends,

Vet Art Project Phoenix was born earlier tonight. Spearheaded by the multi-talented Tessa Windt, we are very excited to bring her into the family. She knows the value of storytelling and the importance of building strong bridges to unite communities. You can contact her at twindt@yahoo.com.

Rainbow Sightings, begun 2008 - ongoing

Online archive of rainbow photographs: www.rainbowsightings.com

John Fisher returns to Chicago for another inspirational talk on War and the Soul

John Fisher, Senior Veteran's Liaison for Soldier's Heart was in Chicago to speak on War and the Soul. It was an inspirational evening indeed! Here just a small taste of this inspiring warrior:

What an honor and a pleasure to be with everyone in Chicago again. The warrior's journey home is often a long, but in the end a treasured trek through spiritual morality. The gruesome experiences are often denied or harbored, yet the acceptance of destiny begins the enlightenment process to the eventual initiation into warriorhood. Without the journey we suffer with the wound. It's the process of climbing up out of the wound that brings understanding with eventual healing, not just for the veteran, but for the entire society.

LOVE, PEACE & LIGHT TO ALL,

JOHN FISHER, DC

See what I mean?!

Then John and myself and Adam Navarro-Lowery and Bill Crist traveled to Racine, Wisconsin for the Soldier's Heart Retreat. Amazing journey filled with storytelling, ritual, healing, and community. More details on upcoming retreats here: www.soldiersheart.net