Windy City Artists Invade Southernmost Creative Community

TSKW Presents next exhibition, Chicago Artists Works on Paper, from January 14 to February 4

Thanks to The Studios of Key West's innovative Cultural Manager Residency Program, the island will soon have the opportunity to view and acquire works by over a dozen prominent Chicago artists. The Historic Armory will host Chicago Artists Works on Paper, an exhibition of almost 30 drawings and mixed-media works, January 14 to February 4, made possible by a new partnership between the Second City and the Southernmost Town. The show also includes a silent auction of 14 original works on paper, donated by each of the participating artists, set for the evening of January 21.

E. W. Ross, former Dean at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and director of its Ox-Bow summer campus in Michigan, was invited to spend January 2009 in The Studios of Key West's Mango Tree House. While here as resident cultural manager, Ross escaped the Windy City's winter, explored our tropical environs, and began thinking about new collaborations and exchanges. After much planning and effort, he returns this season as curator of Chicago Artists Works on Paper and repeat Cultural Manager in Residence at The Studios.

"Last year we began inviting some of America's cultural leaders and arts administrators to spend time in residence on our island. And soon we had dozens of leading creative figures planning their retreats," said Eric Holowacz, executive director of The Studios. "It has become both a strategic and hospitable way to explore new programming, and generate important connections to the mainland and the world."

Chicago is home to 30,000 studios artists, roughly the entire population of Key West, and has long been established as a global center of arts and culture. Following his residency last year, Ross began inviting a diverse group of visual communicators to consider lending work to a special exhibition in Key West. He describes the results like this:


"The fourteen artists in the show are as diverse as the work itself. It is an intergenerational group. Amy Stibich, 24 years old, is showing paper collages and drawings that relate a bit to David Hockney’s use of color and play. She is just at the beginning of a promising career. On the other end, Karl Wirsum, one of the highly influential 'Hairy Who' group of the late 1960’s, is an important Chicago artist with work in the collections of many major museums. His color lithographs are as vibrant and well designed as any anywhere."


Chicago Artists Works on Paper includes 28 pictures, ranging from straight up water-based media to a variety of printmaking, including wood block, lithography and photo etching. Viewers will discover an exquisite landscape study by Susan Kraut, playful puns in Oli Watt’s prints, and the exquisite mysteriousness of Jeanine Coupe-Ryding’s photo etching.


Also contributing to the exhibition are Jose Andreu, Isak Applin, Linda Cohn, and Willie Kohler. George Liebert, Bobbi Meier, Olivia Petrides, Tony Phillips, and curator E. W. Ross round out the extraordianry Chicago line-up.


Thanks to a generous gesture form all of the participating artists, local art collectors will also have the opportunity to acquire 14 of the pictures included in the exhibition. Ranging in value from $200 to $1500, these works will be available by silent auction, opening on January 14 and closing with final bids at 8:00pm during the January 21 reception. Those interested are encouraged to bid just like the people of Chicago vote: early and often. Proceeds will support the current season of The Studios of Key West.


"When Ross told me that the artists had offered to help our organization by donating a work, I was deeply touched," said Holowacz. "I knew that a true partnership had begun, and that this exhibition would be the start of many other cultural connections and collaborations between the Windy City and our tropical retreat."


The Studios of Key West is a now in its third season, and offers workshops, lectures, concerts, exhibitions, and cultural opportunities for everybody. To learn more about Chicago Artists Works on paper, or to find out about other upcoming events, contact The Studios at 296-0458 or visit www.tskw.org

The Studios of Key West hosted a two-week-long Combat Paper residency in December, 2009, in conjunction with their exhibit, "Fibers of Reason". The Armory housed the exhibit while we made paper outside in the courtyard, under a huge mango tree.

Workshop leaders Drew Cameron and Drew Matott were joined by US Marine veteran Donna Perdue (who experienced her first workshop at the Morgan Conservancy in 2009) and other combat papermakers for an organizational planning retreat, gallery exhibit and community workshop in Key West in December. We had a chance to review the Project, plan our future, and make some large colaborative pieces while refreshing our spirit in the Conch Republic.

During the first week of the residency, the group made four pieces for the exhibit, one of which was made in the ocean. Another piece, "What We Left Behind", mounted on a surplus army blanket discovered in the armory attic will be donated to The Studios of Key West. And before we left, we made another large piece in a swimming pool to commemorate our visit. Our thanks to TSKW's Executive Director Eric Holowacz and crew for following the CP Project and offering us a Cultural Manager's residency.

Soldiers use new art form to deal with war

Papermaking with uniforms cathartic, healing

by Timothy O'Hara

Key West Citizen

20 December 2009

On the surface, war and papermaking would seem an unlikely pairing.

However, the two are joined in an emerging art form that one group of veterans hopes will ease the pain of post traumatic stress disorder and provide a new medium to express the military experience.

Through papermaking workshops, veterans use their combat uniforms to create cathartic works of art. The uniforms are cut up, beat and formed into sheets of paper, said Drew Cameron, a 27-year-old former Army sergeant and one of the founders of The Combat Paper Project. Veterans use the process of papermaking to reclaim their uniforms as art and embrace their experiences as a soldier in war, he and other project organizers said. Founders see the project as an alternative to medication and traditional forms of therapy.

The Combat Paper Project's goal is to use art as a means for veterans to reconcile their personal experiences as well as broaden the traditional narrative surrounding service, honor and the military culture, said Cameron.

"The story of the fiber, the blood, sweat and tears, the months of hardship and brutal violence are held within those old uniforms," Cameron wrote of the project. "The uniforms often become inhabitants of closets or boxes in the attic. Reclaiming that association of subordination, of warfare and service into something collective and beautiful is our inspiration."

Founders of the project have taken up residency at The Studios of Key West this month. They will hold a public papermaking workshop from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday. The artwork will remain on display and for sale there until Jan. 10.

Founders of the project are also using their time in Key West to plot the future of the project, which includes plans to work with survivors in other areas of recent conflict such as Belgrade and Sarajevo. The Combat Paper Project is based out of Green Door Studio in Burlington, Vt. The group takes the project on the road, stopping at art institutions and colleges. Their workshops can last days, leaving little time to decompress and plan the long-term future of the project.

"This is a time for us to rest, recoup and reflect," said Drew Matott, the 32-year-old artistic director of the project. "We generally leave these workshops exhausted."

Seeds are sewn

Matott and Cameron are accomplished papermakers and artists who teach paper workshops and create book art. Matott received a master of fine arts in book and paper arts from Columbia College in Chicago. Cameron learned Eastern papermaking from his father and studied Western papermaking from Matott at the Green Door Studio.

The two became fast friends, they said. They met after Cameron, who did a tour of duty in Iraq with an artillery unit, left the military in 2006. Cameron became involved in the peace movement, but he was not comfortable as an organizer of anti-war demonstrations, he said.

Matott initially shied away from asking Cameron about his combat experience. However, Cameron brought in some photos from Iraq one day and the two began discussing the war and the peace movement. While Matott was studying at Columbia, the two developed several public art pieces that built momentum for their continued collaboration.

In 2007, they proposed having Chicago pedestrians cut the uniforms of veterans in public, but the two were unable to receive institutional support for the proposed street intervention. Matott then went onto San Francisco to make paper, work as a book artist and teach. Cameron took up the duties of running the Green Door Studio back in Vermont.

Something about the idea of cutting up the uniforms stuck with Cameron, and in May 2007, he decided to cut up his own uniform and pulp it into paper. It was the first time he had worn his uniform since leaving the military, an experience he called simply "weird." He called a photographer friend to document the event. He cut away the uniform into little strips of cloth until he was standing in only his Skivvies and combat boots.

"I thought it was a powerful image," Cameron said. "You don't really associate a soldier with being or looking so vulnerable, especially in uniform."

The two took about 80 photos and the uniform produced a stack of 70-plus sheets of paper weighing about 3½ pounds. Cameron hit the road shortly afterward, headed to San Francisco.

Around the same time, the San Francisco Center for the Book was looking for an artistic and poetic response to the bombing of a printers row in Bagdad, Matott said. Cameron and Matott submitted the several sheets of paper made from Cameron's uniform to serve as a medium for some of the writings.

Cameron then began dabbling in writing and poetry; his work was published alongside other members of Iraq Veterans Against the War in a book called "Warrior Writers." He later turned the photos into silk-screened works of art. That idea grew, and on Armistice Day 2007, the Green Door Studio held its first workshop in which active duty military personnel and veterans tore up their fatigues and turned them into paper and then art. Some of those who participated were headed to Iraq shortly afterward.

"I remember seeing them drive off, and as their taillights went over the horizon, thinking I may never see them again," Matott said.

The Combat Paper Project was born. The event was an artistic success and schools such as Arizona State University and University of California asked the group to hold papermaking workshops and showings at their facilities.

The project has since branched to other communities. Marine Corps veteran Donna Perdue has started an offshoot of the Combat Paper Project in Cleveland. Programs in Santa Barbara, Calif., and Colorado Springs, Colo., also have sprung up. Plans are now in the works for Minneapolis and San Diego, Matott and Cameron said.

Perdue uses the military term "unserviceable" when describing returning combat veterans. The term usually refers to trucks, military vehicles or weapons that are not functioning.

"We are government property," she said. "We have been damaged and now we need to be fixed. It's a moral obligation. This is our simplest way of saying, 'We will help you.'"

Perdue sees Combat Paper Project as an alternative to traditional forms of therapy and medication. One of the goals the group set while in Key West was to move away from politics and focus more on art therapy. The group is currently working with several art therapists.

"It's very cathartic," said Perdue, who created a piece called My Culture/Amani at Fort Zachary Taylor last weekend using her uniform, the ocean and sand. "When the cutting begins, that's when the magic starts happening and they start talking. It triggers a memory that they have repressed. A lot these guys won't talk about this unless it is with another vet. It is a form of art therapy. We want the veterans to have a means to incorporate self-care."

The project has even begun to expand globally. The Combat Paper Project received a grant last summer to the Arts Council of England to work with former Irish Republic Army, British Armed Forces and civilians caught in the middle of that conflict, Matott said.

Artists with the project will travel this September to Sarajevo and neighboring cities that were ravaged in the Bosnian War.

"The seeds have been planted -- whether they grow or not, we don't know yet," project webmaster and photographer Tom Lascell said.

Key West requests papermakers

News of the project made its way to The Studios of Key West last year, and Executive Director Eric Holowacz invited members of the project to exhibit their work, conduct workshops and give the artists a break from touring.

The Combat Paper Project works on three distinct levels, Holowacz said. It is a therapeutic and cathartic process for war-torn vets, providing a means for them to express hidden feelings and faraway experiences. The project also is an opportunity for the general public to understand how war and conflict have affected friends and neighbors. On a third level, it is about the craft and tradition of making paper, which goes back thousands of years. It began with the Chinese Empire, spread to the Arab world, and flourished with the printing press and the rise of the book, Holowacz said.

"Drew Matott and Drew Cameron are keepers of this tradition, and they have dedicated themselves to bringing the craft and creative process to people around the country and the world," he said. "But for me, a project like Combat Paper represents a kind of maturity for our organization. It brings a richness and a dialogue to the island, and it engages us with the national consciousness."

Art made from old uniforms helps vets tell their story

A group from Vermont has come to Key West to teach veterans how to turn their uniforms into therapeutic art and showcases the work in an exhibit called `Fibers of Reason.'

by Cammy Clark

Miami Herald

18 December 2009

Dress blues from the Navy. Night camouflage fatigues from the Marine Corps. A flak jacket worn in Vietnam.

Military uniforms once meticulously pressed and proudly worn lay cut in pieces on a table in the back yard of The Studios of Key West, destined to be pulverized into pulp in the name of art.

The Combat Paper Project turns the pulp into paper and then into cathartic works of art that give shape and texture to veterans' military memories -- good, bad, deeply buried.

Former Army field artillery soldier Drew Cameron co-founded the thought-provoking and empowering project two years ago at a studio in Vermont. He wanted to help himself heal from the isolation of post-combat life and destructive behavior, such as ``boozing,'' by sharing his war experiences and disillusionment.

He and other leaders of the project are in Key West to host a hands-on workshop Friday, inviting veterans to bring uniforms to create new art to heal old wounds. The group also is exhibiting a collection of the Combat Paper Project's work from around the country called Fibers of Reason, which runs through Jan. 10.

``This exhibit really touches the human soul,'' said Eric Holowacz, executive director of the Studios of Key West. ``The horror of conflict and killing and death and the things soldiers are going through is made real through their art.''

Said Cameron: ``I want you to understand what does happen in war. I want you to know what is happening right now in the name of our democracy, what is happening to the young men and women who are over there now.''

Cameron was a gung-ho, 18-year-old from a military family when he enlisted in the Army in 2000. After four years, including eight months in Iraq in 2003 and two years in the Vermont National Guard, he left the military feeling ``betrayed by my government.''

He pointed to a gray piece of art that features an Army combat uniform with a hole to represent a shrapnel injury to the lower abdomen.

``I call this one Unserviceable,'' he said, referring to the common military term used when someone is injured or equipment is broken.

The uniform belongs to a former sergeant from Minneapolis who served in Iraq. It's embedded in paper made from fibers of his uniform, combined with pieces of uniforms from soldiers who served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Haiti, Bosnia, Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan.

``All of these different conflicts, all of these different experiences of individuals -- their threads are in this, and so is our collective story,'' Cameron said.

Cara Cast spent four years in the Marine Corps, from 1993-97, and said she left the military more fulfilled than when she entered. She never saw combat -- though her Vietnam veteran father ``was the textbook example of the guy who saw the worst . . . and came back and internalized it and never spoke about it.''

Cast said she was interested in the art project to see if she could help veterans in the San Diego area who have been traumatized like her father and don't know how to get help.

While art therapy for war veterans has been popular since the 1960s and '70s, deconstructing uniforms for art was an idea conceived by Cameron and project co-founder Drew Matott, a book and paper artist with no military experience.

The project's signature piece is called Breaking Rank, in which one soldier in a row of six steps out of formation to cut off his uniform.

Veterans with many different types of military experiences have been attracted to the workshops. Donna Perdue, a media coordinator who served 22 years in the Marine Corps, attended a workshop in Cleveland and was hooked.

This week, the former staff sergeant hung up a giant piece she had created in Key West titled My Culture. Created in the ocean near Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park, sand and seaweed is embedded in the pulp along with her uniform and threads from others' uniforms. Perdue said the art was created using a picture of an Iranian refugee she took in Ethiopia.

``She spoke English and told me, `I wish the U.S. would understand more about my culture when they occupied my culture' '' Perdue recalled. ``I want others to know that.''

For more information about the project, workshop or exhibit, go to www.combatpaper.org or call the Studios of Key West at 305-296-0458.