thedrifter
01-08-07, 06:46 AM
Vase creator can't keep up with toll of soldiers' deaths
By John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News
January 8, 2007
GLENWOOD SPRINGS - The dead have swamped Annette Roberts Gray's art.
In the spring of 2004, the 53-year- old potter began making a series of porcelain vases, one for every member of the U.S. military killed in action in Iraq.
But as the roll of the war dead surpassed 3,000 last week, Gray finds herself in a quandary. She has started something she cannot finish.
When the death toll hit 2,500 earlier this year, she called it quits.
"I just felt this is hopeless. There wasn't any end or light at the end of the tunnel," she said.
She has made nearly 900 of the vases, which are about the size of a small coffee mug. They fill her studio and front room of her home. A few hundred are also on display through January at Denver International Airport.
At first glance, the vases all look the same: a translucent white color, slightly larger at the top like a set of shoulders and two small flat handles on either side.
Each comes stamped with a name of the dead member of the military in tiny letters, plus a number signifying their age when they died, the date they were killed and the branch of the military in which they served.
But on closer examination, each one is different, just like the people they represent. Some are taller. Some are squat. The handles on the vases for female soldiers have a curvy, serpentine shape.
Some have a small notch at the lip of the vase. One critic of the vases suggested the notch implied that as vessels, these vases were somehow broken.
Gray said that was not her intent. She just wanted to make the shape more interesting. Eventually, she abandoned marking the notches as a time-saving step. But in the end, she still could not catch up.
An opponent of the war from the start, Gray stressed that she was not trying to make an overt political statement with the vases or the list of the dead that have accompanied gallery shows of her work.
"As an artist, I just put these vases out there, and people interpret it," she said. "I'm shying away from making a statement.
"I don't think it's my place to say," she added. "As an artist, I just want to present something that makes people think or feel."
Occasionally, Gray hears from the relatives of the soldiers. In her studio, a small picture frame holds a photo of Jason Mileo, a young soldier in camouflage.
Mileo's father sent the picture to Gray.
He had been hunting in Colorado when he read a story about her project in the local paper. He stopped by her house and, along with Gray's husband, searched in vain for his son's vase. Gray plans to send him the vase after the DIA exhibit ends.
The mother of another slain soldier from Kansas has not seen the vase Gray made for her son Jeremy Drexler, but she's glad that Gray made it.
"I am just pleased as peach that someone cared about my son," Debbie Drexler wrote in an e-mail. She also has sons serving in the Navy and Marines and is dissatisfied with the way Kansas responded to her son's death.
While Gray called an end to her project this year, she continues making small batches of the vases. Usually she does so in response to e-mails or letters from relatives who request one.
Gray feels her work succeeded insofar as she wanted to make people think.
"It definitely makes people feel and solicited a reaction," she said. "I've just felt all along that these people needed to be recognized. They made the ultimate sacrifice."
Ellie
By John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News
January 8, 2007
GLENWOOD SPRINGS - The dead have swamped Annette Roberts Gray's art.
In the spring of 2004, the 53-year- old potter began making a series of porcelain vases, one for every member of the U.S. military killed in action in Iraq.
But as the roll of the war dead surpassed 3,000 last week, Gray finds herself in a quandary. She has started something she cannot finish.
When the death toll hit 2,500 earlier this year, she called it quits.
"I just felt this is hopeless. There wasn't any end or light at the end of the tunnel," she said.
She has made nearly 900 of the vases, which are about the size of a small coffee mug. They fill her studio and front room of her home. A few hundred are also on display through January at Denver International Airport.
At first glance, the vases all look the same: a translucent white color, slightly larger at the top like a set of shoulders and two small flat handles on either side.
Each comes stamped with a name of the dead member of the military in tiny letters, plus a number signifying their age when they died, the date they were killed and the branch of the military in which they served.
But on closer examination, each one is different, just like the people they represent. Some are taller. Some are squat. The handles on the vases for female soldiers have a curvy, serpentine shape.
Some have a small notch at the lip of the vase. One critic of the vases suggested the notch implied that as vessels, these vases were somehow broken.
Gray said that was not her intent. She just wanted to make the shape more interesting. Eventually, she abandoned marking the notches as a time-saving step. But in the end, she still could not catch up.
An opponent of the war from the start, Gray stressed that she was not trying to make an overt political statement with the vases or the list of the dead that have accompanied gallery shows of her work.
"As an artist, I just put these vases out there, and people interpret it," she said. "I'm shying away from making a statement.
"I don't think it's my place to say," she added. "As an artist, I just want to present something that makes people think or feel."
Occasionally, Gray hears from the relatives of the soldiers. In her studio, a small picture frame holds a photo of Jason Mileo, a young soldier in camouflage.
Mileo's father sent the picture to Gray.
He had been hunting in Colorado when he read a story about her project in the local paper. He stopped by her house and, along with Gray's husband, searched in vain for his son's vase. Gray plans to send him the vase after the DIA exhibit ends.
The mother of another slain soldier from Kansas has not seen the vase Gray made for her son Jeremy Drexler, but she's glad that Gray made it.
"I am just pleased as peach that someone cared about my son," Debbie Drexler wrote in an e-mail. She also has sons serving in the Navy and Marines and is dissatisfied with the way Kansas responded to her son's death.
While Gray called an end to her project this year, she continues making small batches of the vases. Usually she does so in response to e-mails or letters from relatives who request one.
Gray feels her work succeeded insofar as she wanted to make people think.
"It definitely makes people feel and solicited a reaction," she said. "I've just felt all along that these people needed to be recognized. They made the ultimate sacrifice."
Ellie