This Memorial Day, the DEMIL Art Fund is excited to announce the Spring 2024 cohort of artists to be supported by the fund. 

The newest cohort are veterans Eric J. Garcia, Maura García (non-enrolled Cherokee/Mattamuskeet) and Carlos Sirah.

This Memorial Day, the DEMIL Art Fund is excited to announce the Spring 2024 cohort of artists to be supported by the fund. 

The newest cohort are veterans Eric J. Garcia, Maura García (non-enrolled Cherokee/Mattamuskeet) and Carlos Sirah.

Gerald Euhon Sheffield II is an artist and educator living and working in Poughkeepsie, NY. His studio discipline is based in critical and site-specific research, painting, and sculpture. Sheffield’s professional background consists of a diversity of institutions and collaborations across borders. He served in the United States Army for eight years as a Visual Communications and Military Intelligence Public Affairs Specialist in Paraguay, Guatemala, Brazil, and Kuwait. He was a 2022–2023 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Veteran Fellow.

The DEMIL Art Fund has awarded three more grants to veteran artists.

Over the last year, DEMIL Art Fund has supported nine artists with grants. These awards support veteran artists to expand their practice as we prepare for the next Veteran Art Triennial and Summit, SURVIVING THE LONG WARS, scheduled for March 16 - 19, 2023 in Chicago, IL.

An interview with artist GOODW.Y.N. about her project “Ghost of Myself and You: Mothers of the Disappeared” performed in Times Square.

The DEMIL Art Fund is pleased to announce its second cohort of award recipients this Veteran’s Day.

The DAF, in partnership with the emerging Veteran Art Movement, provides veteran artists with $5,000 grants to amplify their artistic practices and engage the public.

The artists in DAF’s second cohort are Miridith S. Campbell (Kiowa) of Duncan, Oklahoma; Erika Renee Land of Macon, Georgia; and Gerald Sheffield of Los Angeles. Each of these recipients exemplifies DAF’s mission of creating knowledge around questions of peace and justice.

This Memorial Day the emerging Veteran Art Movement is excited to partner with the newly established DEMIL Art Fund to announce its first round of grant recipients.

Making Meaning, one of the keynote exhibitions at the first Veteran Art Summit and Triennial in 2019, presented a survey of veteran art that addressed the complexities of war and military service, while challenging the perception that veterans and service members are the only people who can understand these experiences. In the essay “Making Meaning with Recurring Creative Tactics: The Political Implications of Veteran Art” curator Aaron Hughes argues that the featured artists make violence and loss tangible, inviting viewers to witness, acknowledge—perhaps even experience for themselves—these traumas. Ultimately, the artists demonstrated that war is a social issue that all people must work to understand and address.

Through her art and curatorial practices, Amber Hoy establishes surprising poetic relationships that complicate, question, and undermine status quo assumptions about war, military experience, and veteran identity. This can be seen in Entrenched, her documentary-styled photographic series, and also in her curation of the exhibition Open/Closed for the first Veteran Art Summit and Triennial in Chicago, 2019.

In Open/Closed, Hoy rejects didactic approaches to veteran art that conflate stories of combat with the identity of veterans. In order to lift up the important curatorial vision of Open/Closed and celebrate the featured artists (Cao Ba Minh, Fanny Garcia, Karin Rodney-Haapala, James Razko, Brandon Secrest, Gerald Sheffield & Yeon J. Yue) the emerging Veteran Art Movement is republishing Hoy’s exhibition essay.

As uprisings for racial justice have emerged across the world this summer, veterans have taken to the streets to stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. In May, as officials deployed the military to cities across the country, Veterans For Peace and About Face: Veterans Against the War called on fellow service members to stand down for Black lives. At the end of July, a “Wall of Vets” stood between demonstrators and the violent federal and local police. These actions are the most recent manifestation of veterans mobilizing, organizing, and taking action for peace and justice. There is a long history of veteran activism, which last year’s Veteran Movements exhibition at the Veteran Art Summit and Triennial began to sketch out. In hopes to further lift up the important movement history outlined in the Veteran Movements exhibition, the emerging Veteran Art Movement is republishing an essay about the exhibition.

This is the fourth essay republished by the emerging Veteran Art Movement from the National Veterans Art Museum Triennial & Veteran Art Summit Resource Guide.

Every 4th of July brings a new round of performed patriotism. There are the parades, ceremonies, fireworks, and the shelves stocked with flag draped consumables. A number of artists in the emerging Veteran Art Movement have taken note of this performed patriotism. Notably, Hector René Membreño-Canales has started the "Index of Patriotic Consumption," a photographic archive of the many consumer items draped in the Red, White, and Blue.

In this in-depth interview Membreño-Canales discusses the inspirations for his expansive project "Index of Patriotic Consumption," the questions it raises about patriotism, and what patriotism means to him. The interview is packed with powerful insights worth considering especially around the 4th of July weekend.

To foster new understandings of the military, war, power, and justice, Yvette Pino continuously creates opportunities for the “convergence” of multiple perspectives. It’s a key aspect of her Veteran Print Project and also her curation of CONVERGENCE for the first Veteran Art Summit and Triennial in Chicago, 2019 (which featured Rodney Ewing, Ash Kyrie, Jessica Putnam-Phillips, and Ehren Tool). In order to lift up this exhibition, the featured artists, and Pino’s important curatorial work, the emerging Veteran Art Movement is republishing Pino’s essay “CONVERGENCE,” an overview of the exhibition.

As new possibilities for change emerge out of the current uprisings for racial justice, people have been questioning our status quo—namely, its roots in white supremacy, colonialism, and militarism. Such questions are new for some veteran artists; for others, like Carlos Sirah, they are rooted in their practice. Check out Sirah’s essay about Return to the Body, the performance series he curated for last year’s Veteran Art Summit & Triennial featuring Kiam Marcelo Junio, Joseph Lefthand, Nicole Goodwin, Willyum LaBeija, Jefferson Pinder, and the Combat Hippies (Hipólito Arriaga and Anthony Torres).

This is the second essay republished by the emerging Veteran Art Movement, pulled from the National Veterans Art Museum Triennial & Veteran Art Summit Resource Guide.

May 2020 marks one year since the first ever Triennial & Veteran Art Summit. Many artists in the emerging Veteran Art Movement network were featured in the Triennial exhibitions, which ran from May through July 2019, and attended the Summit from May 3rd through 5th, 2019. Throughout this summer, as a way to acknowledge this historic event and celebrate its success, the emerging Veteran Art Movement will be republishing essays from the National Veterans Art Museum Triennial & Veteran Art Summit Resource Guide.

The first essay being republished is Aaron Hughes’ “Veteran Art Summit Overview,” which gives a recap of all the happenings during the Veteran Art Summit. It is impressive and inspiring to look back on all that happened in such a short period of time.

The emerging Veteran Art Movement joined Iraqi artists featured in the Theater of Operations exhibition at MoMA PS1 in calling on MoMA board members to divest from “toxic philanthropy.” After receiving no response, at the closing of Theater of Operations veteran artists supported Iraqi artist Ali Yass for an "alternative closing," an action co-organized with #MoMADivest.

With schools, art centers, galleries, theaters, and venues closed, and tours canceled many artists are struggling in this moment with day to day expenses. As a community of veteran artists we work to support one another and share resources. With that in mind we wanted to share a number of resources that are now available to provide relief and resources to artists.

By Larry Abbott

Monty Little’s work is not a literal depiction of his military experience but is more evocative of the personal impact of the war as he processes his experiences. His work reveals his Navajo sensibility, his war experiences, and his personal vision as an artist, and is a continual process of discovery and invention [...]

45 military veteran artists sent an open letter to Museum of Modern Art PS1 supporting the 37 artists in the Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991 - 2011 exhibition who have appealed for MoMA PS1 board members to divest from “toxic philanthropy.” These artists of the emerging Veteran Art Movement network take responsibility for their past actions and, as such, choose to stand in solidarity with Iraqi artists and all activists calling on MoMA PS1 to “take a truly radical position by divesting from any trustees and sources of funding that profit from the suffering of others.” 

By Kevin Basl | From Praxis in Color, the blog of Frontline Arts.

On a warm night in October 2017, I visited friend, poet and activist Jan Barry, in his home in Teaneck, NJ. He had just returned from an afternoon poetry reading in Nyack, NY and some of the other veteran-poets (also friends) who had performed there hung out in his living room. Energized from a well-received reading, they shared photos and stories. After they left, Jan and I recorded the following interview.

By Aaron Hughes | Crosspost with Justsseds.org.

An interview with artist Eric J. Garcia about his new book Drawing On Anger: Portraits of U.S Hypocrisy and his celebrated exhibition The Bald Eagle’s Toupee at DePaul Art Museum.