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.
This is the third essay republished by the emerging Veteran Art Movement from the National Veterans Art Museum Triennial & Veteran Art Summit Resource Guide.
CONVERGENCE
By Yvette Pino, CONVERGENCE Curator, May 2019
Featured Artists: Rodney Ewing, Ash Kyrie, Jessica Putnam-Phillips, & Ehren Tool
Rodney Ewing, Dry Season #3 Civil Rights Protest. Protestors Attacked by Water Cannon, 2013.
The word “reconciliation,” weighted with religious overtones and preconceived notions, at its root simply means “to change.” One of the most beautiful things about reconciliation is that it cannot happen on its own. It must be offered and accepted. However, war, which by its very nature is defined by a multitude of experiences, complicates definitions of reparations and reconciliation, and confuses ideas of who is vanquished and victor. How we define these concepts, of course, affects how we recognize damage or injury and how we work towards building a more just society. If people are to find harmonization and connection, they must have a deeper understanding of war and reconciliation.
Whether on the battlefield or through people seeking civil rights and basic human needs, war requires, insists upon and determines reconciliation. The artists in the Michigan Central and South Galleries point to differing — at times conflicting — experiences on the same map, demonstrating war’s lasting effects on individuals and communities, while also creating a fuller account of how war changes our culture. The artworks themselves are instruments of change, as well as invitations to reflect upon and seek justice through simple acts of reconciliation.
Jessica Putnam Phillips’ delicate plates offer symbolic interpretations of the crucial work being done by the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. Ash Kyrie’s social practice with Potters for Peace recognizes the essence of water as a necessary human need that cannot, and should not, be commodified. Ehren Tool invites the Chicago community to make cups, exchange stories, and remember those who have been affected by gun violence. Finally, Rodney Ewing’s paintings reveal African Americans’ complicated relationship with water, encouraging dialogue about divisive issues.
Rodney Ewing is an Army veteran who served in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. Born in 1967 in Louisiana, Ewing now lives in San Francisco. He began his art practice before his military service. He earned his Bachelor’s of Fine Art in Printmaking at Louisiana State University in 1989 and Master’s of Fine Art in Printmaking at West Virginia University in 1992. His work explores topics of race, religion, and war. Refuting polarizations of “black and white,” “right and wrong,” “personal and other,” “historical and current,” Ewing’s work seeks to break down the power structures that rely on strict definitions, promoting only specific narratives and supporting the agendas of a select few.
The selected works from Rituals of Water included in Convergence promote a type of introspection that opposes apathetic disconnection from community. They promote individual accounts and memories over national mob mentality. His work creates an intersection where body and place, memory and fact, are merged to reexamine human interactions and cultural conditions, imagining alternative narratives as a means of reconciliation. From the transatlantic slave trade, to droughts in Africa, to the current crisis in Flint, Michigan, this series of photo transfers, made with ink and salt on paper, provides connections to the African American community’s complicated relationship to water.
Rodney Ewing, Dry Season, Aftermath of a Civil Rights Protest. 2013.
Rodney Ewing, Dry Season #2 Civil Rights Protest. Protestors Attacked by Water Cannon, 2013.
Jessica Putnam-Phillips is an Air Force veteran who deployed to the Middle East. When her commitment to the military ended, she changed career paths, earning a BFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington in studio art. In 2013, she completed her MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University, exhibiting her work as part of the Boston Young Contemporaries Exhibition and the New England Collective at the Galatea Gallery.
Putnam-Phillips uses traditional forms, materials and methods, combined with evocative imagery, to explore contemporary social and political issues. In Refuge she illustrates the “Rose of Jericho,” also known as the “resurrection plant,” in delicate sgraffito technique. The Rose of Jericho is a botanical wonder, with its interlocking, elongated stems that allow it to survive extended periods without vital life support systems. During episodes of drought, the tendrils dry and curl up, allowing the wind to carry them through the desert like a tumbleweed. Just one drop of water encourages the plant to open up and thrive again; but it is always prepared to face the next drought. The intricate botanical illustrations in Refuge reach from plate to plate, entwining them together — a symbol representing the work of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. Each element forms a vast network, able to function on its own, but strengthened when connected.
Jessica Putnam-Phillips, Refuge installation, 2019.
Jessica Putnam-Phillips, Refuge installation, 2019.
Jessica Putnam-Phillips, Refuge platers in production, 2019.
Ash Kyrie is a Wisconsin native born in 1980 and an Army National Guard veteran. He deployed to Nasiriyah, Iraq in 2003. In 2007, he earned his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from University of Wisconsin, and in 2011, he earned his Master’s of Fine Art in Comparative Cultural Studies from Ohio State University. He is a 2018 Original Warrior at the National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago, IL and has been the Co-Chair of the Art Committee at the National Veterans Art Museum since 2012.
Kyrie’s work featured in Convergence examines the way an essential resource — water — has been monetized and violently extracted from the Earth, in complete disregard to all life. In Water, he contests the claim of Nestle Inc.’s CEO Brabeck-Letmathe that “it is extreme to consider water a human right.” Kyrie’s installation reflects his unyielding belief that water should not be commodified, and that access to clean, safe drinking water is in fact a human right. For this work of social practice, he collaborated with Potters for Peace, a U.S.-based non-profit that works with subsistence potters in Central America and also helps establish factories around the world to produce ceramic water filters. Working with a Potters for Peace cooperative in Nicaragua, Water exhibits ceramic filtration devices they made collaboratively. Coating the finished ceramic filters with colloidal silver ensures 99.88% percent of waterborne disease agents are removed. The filtration devices make safe drinking water through a low-tech and low-cost system.
Ash Kyrie, Potters for Peace ceramic filtration devices, 2019.
Ash Kyrie, Water installation 2019.
Potters for Peace diagram.
Ash Kyrie, Water installation 2019.
Ehren Tool was born in 1970 in Charlestown, SC and raised in South Central Los Angeles. He is a Marine Corps veteran who served in the 1991 Gulf War and as an Embassy Guard in Rome and Paris. Tool’s work is heavily influenced by his service in the Marine Corps and his return to the civilian world. He received his BFA from the University of Southern California in 2000 and his MFA in 2005 from the University of California at Berkeley. He often describes his work by saying, simply, “I just make cups.” Giving away more than 20,500 cups since 2001, Tool hopes that people will spend time with his work, confronting the uncomfortable and often graphic depictions on his cups. In doing so, Tool wants viewers to locate their place in uncomfortable realities, where civilian and military cultures “collude and collide.”
His vessels often symbolize people, and during the Veteran Art Summit on May 2-5, 2019, Tool welcomed members of the Chicago community who have been impacted by gun violence to create additional cups to add to the 200 already on exhibit. The cups are, in part, layered with imagery from photos and cultural ephemera about gun violence lent to the artist from the Chicago community. The project highlights the complex realities of finding “home” in the Chicago civilian experience, drawing connections to experiences of war through the cups. Each shelf in Tool’s installation holds a specific number of cups. These numbers correlate with the magazine round capacity of the most frequently used guns in Chicago violent crimes: the 9mm and .38 handguns. Shelves holding a single cup represent the one bullet — one small piece of lead — that can profoundly change, or end, a person’s life.
Ehren Tool, War Cup, 2019.
Ehren Tool, War Cup, 2019.
Ehren Tool, Piece of Lead installation, 2019.
Ehren Tool making cups for guests (Nathan Lewis and Juan Spinnato) in the Piece of Lead installation, May 4, 2019