A Place to Connect and Share

Hello and Welcome!!!

This blog has one basic and focused purpose:
To create a full and living list of all the current (and recent) art projects/initiatives/organizations/collectives that are focused on using the arts to give voice to the warrior's experience and connect that voice to our communities.

There is a movement that has existed since the first time a warrior carved or painted their story on a rock or in the dirt. This movement has always been about sharing the pure voice of the person who has lived through sacrifice, service, and pain. Sharing these voices and experiences THROUGH ART with the broader community is a critical part of our collective understanding of war and service, and most importantly a critical part of a warrior's homecoming (whatever that homecoming entails). Some of the narratives remain the same through time. We need look no farther than the work of Sophocles and other ancient warrior-artists to discover this fact.

Narratives become performance, visual art, graffiti, tattoo, dance, sculpture, poetry, prose, song, and more.
Now we have the internet. We have social media. We have the means of sharing and connecting art and community in amazing and creative ways. Now in this landscape, after 11 years of prolonged American wartime, there is a newly invigorated movement arising. I created this blog and common space to honor that movement and help connect anyone, anywhere, that is a part of it. My hope is that this may be one of many spaces on the Web that helps connect people to all things Warrior Art related. My hope is that we learn more and more about what the organizations and projects in this movement are doing, and connect to one another in solidarity.

DISCLAIMER: I have no political or organizational agenda here. My motivations are simply to collect and share information, and help promote the wide array of groups and organizations that already exist that are working to grow this movement. There are many parts of this movement. Some projects are all about memorial, some about finding a new life, some about social change, about personal healing, about activism, about growing community.... My hope is that this space (and whatever it grows into!) is welcome to all of these forces.

Thank you for what you do. Thank you for reading these words. Thank you for helping add to this effort.

IF YOU ARE A PART OF, OR KNOW ABOUT, A GROUP OR PROJECT THAT IS NOT YET POSTED, PLEASE ADD THE LINK, THE ART ITSELF, OR ANY KEY INFO AS A COMMENT.

In service and art,

David

Friday, February 17, 2012

War, Medicine, Art

Wounded in Action: An Art Exhibition of Orthopaedic Advancements
http://www.woundedinactionart.org/

 "All of the artists in Wounded in Action: An Art Exhibition of Orthopaedic Advancements have explored, both literally and figuratively, their feelings toward the loss of limbs and other musculoskeletal wounds - the majority of which are the result of war. The artists include military personnel who live with orthopaedic injuries and family members who helped them through their recovery process. Orthopaedic surgeons who treat wounded military and civilians and whose lives have been affected by war and their own experience with such injuries are also artists in this exhibition."
 

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