"Staring Death in the Face" by Todd Hartwig.
A downtown museum’s massive new art exhibit features an impressive range of media — painting, mosaic, sculpture and quilting — and pain. Lots of pain.
“WAR : RAW — Healing Military Trauma Through Expressive Art,” currently showing at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, includes more than 50 works of art created by Wisconsin military veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and/or traumatic brain injuries. Some of the works are blunt and uncomplicated; others are delicate, complex, layered. Reds and yellows recur throughout, as do tears and hands. A very few are seemingly peaceful, even whimsical.
Much of the art is abstract, perhaps because many of the exhibition’s artists cannot — or will not — verbalize their messages.
“They were not really willing to talk at length about their wartime experiences,” recalls Tim Mayer, executive director of Appleton-based Artists for the Humanities, a nonprofit that combines group therapy and art therapy to help former members of U.S. Armed Forces. The artists in the exhibit are program participants.
“I come from somewhat of a military family,” says Mayer, who founded the organization. “I had also remembered how our veterans were treated when they returned from the Vietnam War. I was also a trained artist. I thought it would be a good thing to do to honor the fallen and all of our veterans.”
Mayer first teamed with Green Bay psychotherapist George Kamps in 2009 to offer community-based art therapy sessions.
“It was so helpful to many of the veterans,” says Mayer. “They were able to disclose their trauma by using pictures.”
He stresses that the work of Artists for Humanities is about helping vets. Rather than creating for an audience, the act of expression is an end to itself.
“This is really a form of visual storytelling,” he says. “We ask them to tell a story on their own terms, with their own work, without judging them, in a safe and tranquil environment.”
Most of the veterans represented in the museum exhibit were not artists previously. Todd Hartwig was. The Prescott, Wis., resident served in the Army and National Guard, and was in Iraq from 2004 to 2005. He has 10 pieces in the show.
“I do a variety of media: blown glass to oil paintings, pastels. Did some carvings. Just pretty much everything,” he says. “I’ve been doing art all my life pretty much.” But a few years ago he found new inspiration.
“Actually, what got me to produce more was PTSD,” Hartwig says. He encountered Mayer and Artists for the Humanities at a Veterans Administration PTSD clinic in Tomah four years ago, and has been participating ever since.
Janet Skenandore Malcolm has three mosaics in the exhibit. She served in the Army from 1965 to 1968. She’s a Native American grandmother and seamstress who resides near Green Bay, in the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin.
Most of her art is abstract and includes imagery from her Medicine Bear Clan. “It takes my mind off [PTSD]. It’s really relaxing, and I’m focused on the artwork itself.”
Artists for the Humanities now has five programs around the state. One, in Milwaukee, is especially for Native American veterans. Mayer has yet to offer sessions in the Madison area, but he hopes to someday.
Working with PTSD survivors is extremely rewarding, says Mayer, though the work has obvious challenges. “Every time I think I’ve heard the worst story possible, I hear something that rivals that,” he says.
“But you kind of learn to put those stories in a separate place so you can do the work effectively.”
WAR : RAW will be on exhibit at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum on the Capitol Square through May 2016.
