Cody oil on paper 17x22 (in traveling show)
Two months before I met him at the VA hospital, Cody had ten fingers and ten toes. But in January, 2012 a pressure-plate IED took out his legs above the knee and two fingers while on foot patrol in Afghanistan. Some classmates and I were at the VA to make work for a reportage drawing class we were taking. But I didn't really want to draw Cody while I was there. I just wanted to listen. The conversations you have with combat veterans who have been what he's been through and lived to tell about it are extremely intense and personal and matter of fact. It's difficult to listen when you're distracted by the process of making a drawing from life. I realize now that there's a place for listening and a place for drawing when doing this sort of thing. The drawing's important, but the core of the work comes from making a connection with someone. And with Cody that was easy. He was calm and kind and very generous with his time even though he had his family there who came up from North Carolina. He was present but also away somewhere. And understandably so. As we spoke, his little brother (maybe 12 y.o. or so) played a FPS war-type video game set in the Middle East on the hospital room's television, which was pretty surreal. Between explanations of where he was from and how he sustained his injuries, the sound of gunfire and explosions and the constant, frantic, frustrated tapping of the controller clicked in the background. I wanted him to shut it down, but I didn't say anything. Perhaps he was playing it to better understand his older brother's life or to prove he had what it took to be tough, too. If only it were that easy. I made this piece with psychological distance in mind - the distance between being whole and being fragmented, between the warrior mentality and the civilian mindset, between innocence and corruption, between who he was and who he is, between safety and danger, and between being lost and being at peace.