“For these guys, and for some of us who are veterans, the war never ends,” said Mike Fay, of the subjects he draws. A former Chief Warrant Officer in the Marine Corps, Fay served as the sole, official Marine Corps artist on active duty in Iraq tasked with documenting the war through his drawings. Now, he spends his time organizing the Joe Bonham Project, a loosely connected group of artists who make portraits of wounded soldiers. Over 50 of these works — some created just weeks after soldiers have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan — are featured in a show opening today in Charlotte, North Carolina.
After returning from his final tour in Afghanistan in 2006, Fay and current official Marine Corps artist Kris Battles began visiting and drawing wounded veterans at Washington D.C.’s Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Fay quickly realized that “we had this new generation of guys with really catastrophic wounds.” He decided to organize more formally, naming it after Joe Bonham, the fictional WWI soldier who lost all of his limbs and facial features in Dalton Trumbo’s 1938 anti-war novel, “Johnny Got his Gun.”
The group includes around 20 artists with various political views who work in diverse media including illustration, digital, and conceptual art. Battles and Fay have both been on the front lines, and a few Joe Bonham members, like Victor Juhasz and Steve Mumford, have been to Iraq and Afghanistan as embedded combat artists. Similar to journalists and photographers, embedded artists must travel with the backing of a media outlet to document the war through their practice. But along with the handful of seasoned vets and combat artists in the group, the majority of Joe Bonham artists are civilians who have never been in a war zone.
Regardless of its military roots, the Joe Bonham project is witness art, not political propaganda. “We do it to tell the stories. We don’t take a political stance. We’re not heralding the war. We’re not denouncing the war. We’re simply painting a visual picture of those fighting their own wars when they come home,” explained Robert Bates, the Marine Corps veteran and combat artist organizing the group’s upcoming exhibition. Bates sees the project as an extension of war art made in the field. “It’s the aftereffects of combat, and what they’re combating today at home. We’re still embedding with a subject, and prying into their personal life and trying to tell their story,” he said.
The artists don’t sell any of the works they create as part of the Joe Bonham Project, and in many ways, the project is as much about relationships and healing as it is about the finished portraits. Fay emphasized the ways in which the artists build rapport with the subjects, asking about what happened to them, holding their hands, making eye contact, and trying to make sure the world doesn’t forget them. “We want to show that there are wounds that aren’t visible. Everything from the wounds you can definitely see — guys that are basically torsos — to people who have wounds that are just as profound, but aren’t as easy to see, like post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.”
In addition to documenting for history, or posterity, Battles spoke about the way in which the project helps people — both veterans and civilians — heal. “Human creativity can be a great unifier. We don’t have a political agenda, but I think we can bridge a gap between communities that may not agree on things politically.”
What comes across most powerfully through the works in the Joe Bonham Project is just what Battles describes: the way art can break down the walls that prevent people from seeing the humanity in each other. As participating artist Jeffrey Fisher wrote in the Joe Bonham catalogue, “I no longer focused on the ravages of war, but instead am now focused on the individual serviceman, his dedication, and his forward-looking attitude, and that is what I try to record. Not the physical, although there is no getting around that, but rather, the ethereal essence, not of the Marine or soldier but of the man who happens to be a Marine or soldier.”
The exhibition, a collaboration between the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and the Central Piedmont Community College, is the second Joe Bonham show to take place in Charlotte. There have also been shows in Virginia and Michigan and in 2011, the works were exhibited at Storefront Bushwick, in an exhibition organized by New Criterion editor, James Panero. Both Fay and Bates will receive awards from the Marine Corps on April 20, in recognition of their work with the Joe Bonham project.
According to Fay, the project will continue for as long as there are GI’s in the hospital. Maybe that won’t be forever.