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thedrifter
08-24-03, 07:23 AM
IN HIS CREATIVE VOICE - Depot's own combat artist continues legacy
Submitted by: MCRD San Diego
Story Identification Number: 200382218037
Story by Cpl. Ethan E. Rocke



MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT SAN DIEGO, Calif.(August 22, 2003) -- Without the aid of any camera or high-tech broadcast equipment, one Marine completed a very unique mission during Operation Iraqi Freedom, telling the Marine Corps' story with nothing more than a sketch pad, pencils, some charcoal and a very deep love for art.

In America's most recent war, Sgt. Jack M. Carrillo, combat artist, Marine Corps Historical Division, was the first enlisted Marine assigned to the region with the specific mission of creating combat art.

"It was a huge honor to be selected for this mission," said Carrillo. "It was a dream come true to be able to use my art and ability to tell the Marine Corps' story and be a part of something that's bigger than me."

Carrillo, formerly assigned to the Depot's Combat Visual Information Center, was augmented by Historical Division, Headquarters Marine Corps, for the distinctive mission in January, not long after becoming the first enlisted Marine to design Marine Corps uniform plates.

Carrillo made a name for himself within the small community of Marine combat illustrators after rendering the paintings of Marines wearing the Corps' new combat utility uniforms.

He headed to Kuwait in January anxious to let the inspiration flow and do what he says he does best: create art.

"It's like a nervous twitch," said the 32-year-old, brown-eyed Marine. "Some people tap their fingers or chew on pencils; I have to draw. It's what I do. It's something inside me that always has to get out. Any time, any place, any situation, I'll throw down (art)."

Prior to departing for Kuwait, Jack Dyer, curator of art, Historical Division, briefed Carrillo on the expectations of his mission.

"Jack told me he would not tell me what, how, or when to draw, only that I was to be a hustler, get as close to the action as possible and document through art, the climate of any given situation. With those simple instructions, I set out to do exactly that," Carrillo said.

He arrived in Kuwait to find he was operating very much on his own. His mission became one of adaptation and improvisation as he slowly found the connections and resources needed to accomplish his mission.

By the time the war began, Carrillo had joined a team of Marine 'storytellers' who fell under the same command as he did. A fairly well-equipped crew of Marine videographers quickly adopted Carrillo and formed a small combat visual information team.

The CVI team, still needing a parent unit to fall under, found themselves attached to Company D, 1st Tank Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, for the operation to liberate Iraq.

It didn't take long for Carrillo to find himself completely absorbed in the front lines of the war with a constant barrage of inspiring images to "throw down."

"I tried to capture anything I thought was historically significant or things I just connected with as an artist," he said. "If I thought something had a good story, I tried to capture it and tell the story."

Carrillo said there were times when he became frustrated because he couldn't capture certain aspects of his surroundings, such as the smell of burning palms and twisted metal, or the sound of stray Iraqi dogs barking throughout the night.

Carrillo, whose art experience includes a lot of work in graffiti art, said he found himself driven by the fast-paced nature of his mission and environment and related it to the spirit of graffiti art.

"The spirit of street art inspired me," he said. "It's fast-paced, in-your-face, create-it-and-go art," he said. "Any graffiti artist has the potential to be a great combat artist. I love that spirit."

Carrillo channeled that spirit consistently, throwing down his art in various locations throughout Iraq. From Kuwait to Baghdad, and eventually further than that, he created more than 150 sketches of everything from female mechanics working to Iraqi prisoners to tank battles.

Like everyone else, Carrillo experienced the constant challenges combat presents. On the second day of the war, the Humvee carrying his equipment drove into a swamp and overturned during a fire fight in Al Basrah. The majority of his art supplies and equipment was damaged beyond salvation, but Carrillo overcame the mishap and carried on with five sketch pads, some pencils, graphite and charcoal.

"All my watercolors and paints were trashed, but in a way, it simplified the way I executed my mission," said the 6-foot Marine. "You have to adapt and overcome in that environment. That's just something we as Marines have ingrained in us. We accomplish the mission no matter what it takes."

While he was accomplishing his mission, Carrillo found himself establishing strong bonds and friendships with the Marines he was serving alongside. It didn't take long for Carrillo to translate those bonds into his artwork.

"Marine tankers are a very tough crew to run around with," Carrillo said. "Those Marines became my brothers. We fought, served, prayed, sweated and stank together."

Despite the chaotic environment Carrillo was enduring, he stayed motivated and excited about his mission, and his true nature as an artist and instinct as a Marine first drove him to stay in Iraq as long as he could.

"When division finally caught up with me, I didn't want to leave," said the energetic Marine. "I wanted to keep drawing and doing what I love."

Carrillo eventually left Iraq for Kuwait and then headed back home to San Diego. Since then, he has been assigned temporary additional duty to 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

He is currently completing his pioneering combat-art mission by finishing 10 paintings for the Marine Corps Historical Division to supplement the 150 sketches he already rendered in the war, and according to Historical Division officials, they are pleased with his efforts.

"Sgt. Carrillo is a talented, vigorous and productive combat artist," said retired Capt. Charles Grow, assistant curator of art, Historical Division, and former combat artist. "He is a good Marine, and I think he's going to do good things for the Marine Corps combat art collection."

Carrillo's artwork will tell the Marine Corps story for decades to come, and those who observe it can hear Carrillo speaking to them through the art that served as his voice during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"Art is everywhere at any time. It's something I have to do. It's a man's creative voice," Carrillo said. "Art is how I cope in life, and to be a part of the combat art legacy is an amazing feeling."

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/2003822183414/$file/Carrillo_Sandstorm_lr.jpg

Photo by: War Art by Sgt. Jack M. Carrillo


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/200382218396/$file/Carrillo_War_Crimes1_lr.jpg

Carrillo gets back to his roots during Operation Iraqi Freedom, taking a moment to tag a wall. Carrillo was once a street artist painting graffiti murals as a specialty.
Photo by: Courtesy photo


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/2003822184226/$file/Carrillo_Studio1_lr.jpg

Sgt. Jack M. Carrillo, combat artist, works on an Operational Iraqi Freedom watercolor project for Marine Corps Historical Division.
Photo by: Cpl. Ethan E. Rocke


continued.....

thedrifter
08-24-03, 07:26 AM
http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/2003822184343/$file/Carrillo_HMMWV_lr.jpg

Photo by: War Art by Sgt. Jack M. Carrillo


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/2003822184441/$file/Carrillo_peaking_lr.jpg

Photo by: War Art by Sgt. Jack M. Carrillo

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/200382218477/$file/Carrillo_GAS_lr.jpg

Photo by: War Art by Sgt. Jack M. Carrillo



Sempers,

Roger

thedrifter
09-01-03, 01:17 PM
Marine crafts the art of war

Sketches enhance historical record of service in Iraq

By Jeanette Steele
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

August 31, 2003

Amid the staggering technology of the U.S. military arsenal in Iraq, one Marine sat alone, armed with his pencil.

Sgt. Jack Carrillo, a Marine combat artist, was dispatched into the thick of the war to sketch the action.

Now back in San Diego, Carrillo has five notebooks full of illustrations that reveal the fear and the fraternity of combat that don't always come across in photographs.

"Why should the Marine Corps have artists as opposed to photographers to tell the same story? When you have an artist, that's coming from right here," said Carrillo, 32, thumping both hands against his chest.

"I see it and I process it through all my collective experiences, through all the stimulation I receive in a combat environment."

The United States sent about a dozen artists to Iraq, continuing an artistic tradition that reaches back to the Revolutionary War, experts said.

The Army assigned its first soldier artists to the battlefield during World War I, said Rénee Klish, Army art curator at the Army's Center of Military History in Washington, D.C. Before that, unofficial artists, journalists and other civilians provided sketches and paintings to document the nation's wars.

This time, the Army dispatched one designated artist. The Navy sent two and the Air Force depended on about eight civilian volunteers, officials said. The Marines deployed a second artist when Carrillo returned home in May.

"You can send out any 19-year-old with a camera and he's going to come back with a whole lot of pictures," said Charles Grow, assistant art curator at the Marine historical center in Washington, D.C.

"But an artist has a different way of seeing things, and we think that's historically valuable."

Carrillo arrived in Kuwait in March, days before the war began. It would be his first combat experience after joining the corps in 1996.

Even as a Marine sergeant, he struggled to find a unit that would welcome him. Commanders seemed to want a hanger-on artist as much as they wanted a leaky tank.

They wanted him to stay in Kuwait and sketch from pictures sent back by the legions of Marine photographers.

But Carrillo, who has a long drawl and a quick, contagious laugh, knew his mission.

"The curator told me, 'I'm not going to tell you what to draw or tell you how to do it. Just get as close as you can to where the action is,'" he said.

"I knew exactly what I was supposed to do: Tell the Marine Corps' story through my art, and that's it. And nothing else."

Finally, traveling in a Humvee full of Marine cameramen, the artist joined a tank company from Twentynine Palms. The men of Delta Company, 1st Tank Battalion, would be his subjects.

Instantly, these "tankers" razzed him.

"They'd always bust my chops. You know, 'Oh, the cartoonist is with us.' " Carrillo said. "I'd say, 'man, I'm not a cartoonist. I'm an artist.' "

Through Carrillo's art, Delta Company will enter history at the Marine Corps archives in Washington, D.C.

There's the drawing of Lance Cpl. Michael "The Badger" Lipscomb, the company's young mechanic. He's sitting on a box holding a can of hydraulic fluid, the tanks' life blood. The lines Carrillo used to shade the stubbly face and the slant of the hunched shoulders say this Marine is both grimy and tired.

And there's Capt. Gregory Poland, the company commander. He sits on a Humvee with an intravenous bag hooked to his arm, taking the fluids to recover from food poisoning that hit the unit. In profile, the swooping downward curve of Poland's mouth speaks of hard days in the field.

Carrillo's drawings show the agitation of combat as the tankers rumbled north to Baghdad. He drew while his Humvee was moving and whenever he could pull out a sketchbook safely.

His greatest fear was an attack while his attention was focused on the page. He finally asked one tanker, a corporal, to watch his back while he drew.

The battle-scene drawings look jerky because often he was moving fast. In one, smoke billowing from the tank column is a jumble of lines, not the precision of his earlier work.

"This is combat. It's disjointed, but it's like, these are the ones I almost lost my life for, so they mean the most to me," Carrillo said.

Bullets were not the only challenge. During a crash, his art supplies – books, pencils, charcoals, waxy art crayons and all – fell into a 10-foot deep Iraqi swamp.

Heart sinking along with his rucksack, Carrillo feared almost everything was lost.

The sketchbooks now bear the crinkled imprint of the swamp, and bugs are smashed between some pages, but the images survived.

"That's Al Basra," Carrillo said, holding a sketchbook up to his nose to catch the moldy smell of a desert city where they stopped.

His drawings nearly vibrate with emotion. But Carrillo said his greatest frustration was feeling unable to convey the whole scene: the acrid stench of rubber tires burning on bombed-out trucks, barking dogs, the five-times-a-day murmur of Muslim prayers.

"There's so much to it," he said. "The smells and the sounds. . . . It's like how do you capture it?"

But it appears he didn't shirk the unpleasantries of war. His drawings show Iraqi prisoners under Marine guard. They depict dead Iraqis along the roadside.

There were some things he refused to sketch.

One was an Iraqi captured after the Marines found him trying to rape a young girl. He was tied up next to a monument, dressed in traditional flowing white robes, which caught the artist's eye.

"A part of me wanted to draw him, but I was like, I'm not even going to dignify that," he said.

Also, he refused to dishonor his comrads.

"Anything I feel would put the Marine Corps in a bad light, you're not going to see it," he said.

His mentors at the Marine historical division praised his work. It will be kept at the Marine museum, along with a handful of watercolor paintings Carrillo is now creating from his sketches.

"He was able to take what he experienced and put it in terms other people can appreciate," said Grow, a former Marine captain who was a combat artist in the Persian Gulf War and Somalia and Haiti conflicts.

Carrillo is stationed at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego while he finishes his paintings. He looks forward to a long career in combat art, after an unlikely path to the Marine historical archives.

Self-taught, Carrillo always had a pencil in hand as a child. Later, after he finished high school and joined the Navy as a corpsman, he survived night shifts in hospital wards by filling pages with figures.

He was set to leave the military when he heard about the Marine combat art program and convinced recruiters to accept a 25-year-old who already had a wife and two children.

Now he has three boys, 10, 8 and 4, with his wife of 13 years.

"I love the Marine Corps. They are going to have to kick me out of this sucker. I'm not going anywhere," Carrillo said. "This is is the best job. This is the best honor."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeanette Steele: (760) 476-8244; jen.steele@uniontrib.com


Examples of Jack Carrillo's artwork are available online at SignOnSanDiego , the Union-Tribune's Web site, at www.military.uniontrib.com

Photo gallery

http://www.signonsandiego.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=carrillo_sketches


http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20030831-9999_1m31carrillo.html

Sempers,

Roger
:marine: