Bridge acrylic on paper 14x99 (nine 11x14 sheets)
While at the Anderson Ranch I took a class with Todd Hebert http://www.bellwethergallery.com/artistsindex_01.cfm?fid=1 . The class was geared toward making work based on past experiences, so I used my time to find a visual language for my military time overseas. We began by making a list of words that described particular memories or relationships. Since our deployment was 11 months long, I had a large bank of memories and ended up with a fairly long list. From that list I began making work. Just small sketches at first, but they got larger as the week went on. I brought no pictures with me to this workshop and instead relied on my memories of Mosul, Tall'afar, and other places we ended up to fuel the imagery. In almost all cases, there was an emphasis on place more than events or characters. Even when these "places" are populated, it's with a non-descript soldier. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe I'm just not ready for all of that yet. Who knows? Anyway, it's just the beginning for this sort of thing, so maybe all of that will get figured out as time goes on.