thedrifter
03-10-08, 10:26 AM
Military artists capture realities of the war zone
March 9, 2008 12:16 am
BY LAURA MOYER
The young Marine balanced a 240 Golf machine gun on his shoulder. He gripped a bandoleer heavy with 7.62 mm NATO rounds.
The blasted-out wall of an empty school near the town center of Old Ubaydi, Iraq, gave him cover. And there he waited, focused and intense.
It was November 2005. Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment was sweeping from the Syrian border east and south along the Euphrates River, rousting out insurgents.
The Marine couldn't have been more than 21 or 22, but he was no kid. Michael Fay could see that in his face.
Fay, a chief warrant officer and combat artist traveling with the Marine's unit, stepped away from the security of the school to capture that gunner's image with a digital camera.
Moments later, Marines moved en masse through the school, prepared to encounter booby traps or hidden "spider holes" of sneak attackers.
They cleared the school without getting "lit up," as they call it. And then they moved on.
WAR AND ART
Back home in Fredericksburg, Fay pored through his journals, sketchbooks and photographs to find direction for a new body of artwork.
An accomplished painter and printmaker at 54, Fay was just venturing into sculpture.
Fay and Sgt. Kristopher Battles, 39 and a Spotsylvania County resident, are part of a long tradition of military artists--fighting men who portray their war experiences in sketches, prints, watercolors and oils.
Both Fay and Battles are assigned to the National Museum of the Marine Corps' Combat Art Collection and tasked with going to war and making art.
When they're not traveling fully armed and ready to fight alongside their fellow Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq, they work on the Quantico base.
Their studio is a cavernous World War II-era warehouse filled with the sounds of classical and rock music and the rattling of metal doors in wind.
When Fay decided to try his hand at sculpture, he found little by way of example from his military artist predecessors.
The most famous nearby war-themed sculptures are Felix de Weldon's Iwo Jima memorial and Frederick Hart's "The Three Soldiers" portion of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.
But both de Weldon and Hart were civilians tasked with creating inspirational, larger-than-life patriotic tributes.
That's not what military artists do. It's not their job to glorify war, or to render it with scrupulous objectivity. Rather, they use their observations, emotions and status as participants to capture any aspect of a Marine's war experience--intensity, concentration, fear or boredom, interactions with other Marines or encounters with civilians.
Fay's research led him to a book by British army officer Charles Sargeant Jagger, who sculpted based on his World War I experience. Using Jagger's written guidance, Fay taught himself the basics of sculpting military subjects.
It hit him that Jagger's Tommies weren't crisply pressed and chisel-chinned; rather, their uniforms were wrinkled, their puttees loose and their faces weary.
When he started thinking of a suitable subject for his own 24-inch standing sculpture, he remembered that machine-gunner in Old Ubaydi.
Fay uses a technique called ecorche, "flayed man"--creating a wire framework, then bones, then muscles, and finally skin, clothing and gear.
He works in plasticine and wax; the works eventually are cast in bronze in collaboration with Fredericksburg's Wegner Metal Arts.
That day in November 2005, facing a dangerous task and under constant threat of attack, Fay didn't ask the machine-gunner his name or hometown. But the statue isn't meant to be a portrait of that specific Marine.
What Fay wants to show is a particular adrenaline-filled moment when one Marine was the embodiment of a warrior--focused, ageless and functioning at his peak.
"It's very elemental," Fay said, "a core experience of what it really means to be human."
A WARY ENCOUNTER
Embedded with the Marines' 4th Civil Affairs Group in Iraq's Anbar Province, Sgt. Kristopher Battles checked his gear.
Camera, sketchpads, watercolors and pencils.
M-16, 9 mm pistol, ammunition and body armor.
It was January 2007, and the Marines were on a friendly mission--or so they hoped. With an interpreter, a small group set out to visit a remote compound of homes, to meet the residents and deliver kerosene heaters, bookbags, clothing and stuffed animals. And to make sure no insurgents lurked there, using the civilians for cover.
A cluster of civilians--women and boys, in a mixture of traditional and modern clothing--walked into the cold to size up the visitors.
"There wasn't any animosity. We were a novelty," Battles recalled recently.
That moment inspired Battles' current painting, a study in contrasts.
On the left are the military men, backs to the viewer, wearing desert camouflage and body armor. On the right, facing the viewer, are the civilians, wearing black and bright reds and maroons.
In the background, across a stretch of sand, are several low, flat houses.
The faces of the women and boys reflect an array of emotions. A boy apprehensively tugs at his lip. A young woman, maybe in her late teens, scowls defiantly. The older women stand back, curious but cautious.
It's not a firefight moment; its drama comes from the wary interaction that characterizes many military-civilian encounters.
To combat artists like Battles and Fay, the small moments matter, too.
They know firsthand that being a Marine in a war zone means hours when every nerve is on end, and hours of grinding boredom. Of life-or-death combat, of weariness, of humor, of camaraderie.
"There are times when there's sort of a serene calm, when you're dog-tired at the end of the day, setting up tents," Battles said.
He and Fay are realists, but not illustrators; they're a part of the Marine experience, and they don't try to distill themselves out of it.
So they make sketches and notes of the not-so-glorious times, when Marines are waiting for a helicopter, frustrated and thirsty, or when they're shooting the breeze or reading a book.
"As artists," Battles said, "we want to be sponges."
Laura Moyer: 540/374-5417
Email: lmoyer@freelancestar.com
NAME: Chief Warrant Officer Michael Fay
AGE: 54
FAMILY: One adult daughter
HOME: Pennsylvania native now living in Fredericksburg
EDUCATION: Graduate of Penn State University
MARINE EXPERIENCE: 1975-78, 1983-93 and October 2001-present; reservist in 2000 and 2001
Has served as a combat artist in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
ON THE WEB: mdfay1.blogspot.com
NAME: Sgt. Kristopher Battles
AGE: 39
FAMILY: Wife Kelly, children ages 5, 3 and 1
HOME: Missouri native now living in Spotsylvania County
EDUCATION: Graduate of Northeast Missouri State University
MARINE EXPERIENCE: 1986-94 and 2006-present. Most recently in Iraq with Osprey V-22 squadron.
ON THE WEB: krisbattles.com kjbattles.blogspot.com
Ellie
March 9, 2008 12:16 am
BY LAURA MOYER
The young Marine balanced a 240 Golf machine gun on his shoulder. He gripped a bandoleer heavy with 7.62 mm NATO rounds.
The blasted-out wall of an empty school near the town center of Old Ubaydi, Iraq, gave him cover. And there he waited, focused and intense.
It was November 2005. Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment was sweeping from the Syrian border east and south along the Euphrates River, rousting out insurgents.
The Marine couldn't have been more than 21 or 22, but he was no kid. Michael Fay could see that in his face.
Fay, a chief warrant officer and combat artist traveling with the Marine's unit, stepped away from the security of the school to capture that gunner's image with a digital camera.
Moments later, Marines moved en masse through the school, prepared to encounter booby traps or hidden "spider holes" of sneak attackers.
They cleared the school without getting "lit up," as they call it. And then they moved on.
WAR AND ART
Back home in Fredericksburg, Fay pored through his journals, sketchbooks and photographs to find direction for a new body of artwork.
An accomplished painter and printmaker at 54, Fay was just venturing into sculpture.
Fay and Sgt. Kristopher Battles, 39 and a Spotsylvania County resident, are part of a long tradition of military artists--fighting men who portray their war experiences in sketches, prints, watercolors and oils.
Both Fay and Battles are assigned to the National Museum of the Marine Corps' Combat Art Collection and tasked with going to war and making art.
When they're not traveling fully armed and ready to fight alongside their fellow Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq, they work on the Quantico base.
Their studio is a cavernous World War II-era warehouse filled with the sounds of classical and rock music and the rattling of metal doors in wind.
When Fay decided to try his hand at sculpture, he found little by way of example from his military artist predecessors.
The most famous nearby war-themed sculptures are Felix de Weldon's Iwo Jima memorial and Frederick Hart's "The Three Soldiers" portion of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.
But both de Weldon and Hart were civilians tasked with creating inspirational, larger-than-life patriotic tributes.
That's not what military artists do. It's not their job to glorify war, or to render it with scrupulous objectivity. Rather, they use their observations, emotions and status as participants to capture any aspect of a Marine's war experience--intensity, concentration, fear or boredom, interactions with other Marines or encounters with civilians.
Fay's research led him to a book by British army officer Charles Sargeant Jagger, who sculpted based on his World War I experience. Using Jagger's written guidance, Fay taught himself the basics of sculpting military subjects.
It hit him that Jagger's Tommies weren't crisply pressed and chisel-chinned; rather, their uniforms were wrinkled, their puttees loose and their faces weary.
When he started thinking of a suitable subject for his own 24-inch standing sculpture, he remembered that machine-gunner in Old Ubaydi.
Fay uses a technique called ecorche, "flayed man"--creating a wire framework, then bones, then muscles, and finally skin, clothing and gear.
He works in plasticine and wax; the works eventually are cast in bronze in collaboration with Fredericksburg's Wegner Metal Arts.
That day in November 2005, facing a dangerous task and under constant threat of attack, Fay didn't ask the machine-gunner his name or hometown. But the statue isn't meant to be a portrait of that specific Marine.
What Fay wants to show is a particular adrenaline-filled moment when one Marine was the embodiment of a warrior--focused, ageless and functioning at his peak.
"It's very elemental," Fay said, "a core experience of what it really means to be human."
A WARY ENCOUNTER
Embedded with the Marines' 4th Civil Affairs Group in Iraq's Anbar Province, Sgt. Kristopher Battles checked his gear.
Camera, sketchpads, watercolors and pencils.
M-16, 9 mm pistol, ammunition and body armor.
It was January 2007, and the Marines were on a friendly mission--or so they hoped. With an interpreter, a small group set out to visit a remote compound of homes, to meet the residents and deliver kerosene heaters, bookbags, clothing and stuffed animals. And to make sure no insurgents lurked there, using the civilians for cover.
A cluster of civilians--women and boys, in a mixture of traditional and modern clothing--walked into the cold to size up the visitors.
"There wasn't any animosity. We were a novelty," Battles recalled recently.
That moment inspired Battles' current painting, a study in contrasts.
On the left are the military men, backs to the viewer, wearing desert camouflage and body armor. On the right, facing the viewer, are the civilians, wearing black and bright reds and maroons.
In the background, across a stretch of sand, are several low, flat houses.
The faces of the women and boys reflect an array of emotions. A boy apprehensively tugs at his lip. A young woman, maybe in her late teens, scowls defiantly. The older women stand back, curious but cautious.
It's not a firefight moment; its drama comes from the wary interaction that characterizes many military-civilian encounters.
To combat artists like Battles and Fay, the small moments matter, too.
They know firsthand that being a Marine in a war zone means hours when every nerve is on end, and hours of grinding boredom. Of life-or-death combat, of weariness, of humor, of camaraderie.
"There are times when there's sort of a serene calm, when you're dog-tired at the end of the day, setting up tents," Battles said.
He and Fay are realists, but not illustrators; they're a part of the Marine experience, and they don't try to distill themselves out of it.
So they make sketches and notes of the not-so-glorious times, when Marines are waiting for a helicopter, frustrated and thirsty, or when they're shooting the breeze or reading a book.
"As artists," Battles said, "we want to be sponges."
Laura Moyer: 540/374-5417
Email: lmoyer@freelancestar.com
NAME: Chief Warrant Officer Michael Fay
AGE: 54
FAMILY: One adult daughter
HOME: Pennsylvania native now living in Fredericksburg
EDUCATION: Graduate of Penn State University
MARINE EXPERIENCE: 1975-78, 1983-93 and October 2001-present; reservist in 2000 and 2001
Has served as a combat artist in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
ON THE WEB: mdfay1.blogspot.com
NAME: Sgt. Kristopher Battles
AGE: 39
FAMILY: Wife Kelly, children ages 5, 3 and 1
HOME: Missouri native now living in Spotsylvania County
EDUCATION: Graduate of Northeast Missouri State University
MARINE EXPERIENCE: 1986-94 and 2006-present. Most recently in Iraq with Osprey V-22 squadron.
ON THE WEB: krisbattles.com kjbattles.blogspot.com
Ellie