September 2 - 30, 2015 
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 2, 6 - 8pm
Featuring the Artists:
Joseph Duarte (San Antonio)
Aaron Hughes (Illinois)
Giuseppe Pellicano (Oregon)
Ehren Tool (Berkeley)
Erin Trieb (Austin)
Regina Vasquez (San Marcos, Texas)
Curated by Dr. Scott Sherer and Marissa Del Toro
Special Events: Aaron Hughes, Visiting Artist
September 15, Main Campus
11:30am - 12:30pm, Artist Lecture, Art 3.01.18A
6:00 - 7:30pm, Performance, Art Gallery
Panel Discussion:
A Life in Transition: Veterans Back Home
Wednesday September 30, 2015
UTSA Main Campus
11:30am-12:30pm
Art Gallery
Free and Open to the Public
Panelists:
Lisa Firmin
USAF Colonel Ret. & Associate Provost for Diversity and Recruitment at UTSA
Ty Brown
USN Veteran & Staff, Veterans Certification Office at UTSA
Tyler Wynne
USN Veteran & President, Student Veterans Association at UTSA
We welcome the public to join us in discussion of issues faced by service members as they transition back into the civilian world.
Panelists will discuss matters regarding health, community, and family as well as issues of inclusiveness for Veterans at UTSA and within the broader San Antonio community.
As the closing reception event to the exhibition, The Uncertainty of a Life in Security: Veterans Back Home, attendees will receive a free cup from the “100 of a Thousand” by Ehren Tool (while cups last).
The Uncertainty of a Life in Security: Veterans Back Home
“The Uncertainty of a Life in Security,” curated by Dr. Scott Sherer and Marissa Del Toro, explores the topic of security as it extends unevenly from the promise of military expertise to the complex lives of veterans and their families back home. Security is at once a mission of defense, safekeeping, and shelter, but a broad range of both short-term and long-term effects of work in the field has increasingly affected the lives of service men and women, their loved ones, and others in their communities. In recent years, news about veterans’ experiences demonstrates that personal security often remains a difficult objective to achieve. All of the artists in this exhibition are veterans or those who have dedicated much energy to working with veterans. Across media, their work begins with strong foundations in lived experiences to analytical and conceptual understandings of security, its hard-won successes and its failures. Artists include Joseph Duarte (San Antonio), Aaron Hughes (Illinois), Giuseppe Pellicano (Oregon), Ehren Tool (Berkeley), Erin Trieb (Austin), and Regina Vasquez (San Marcos, Texas).
Joseph Duarte served in the US Marine Corps in the infantry and as a non-commissioned officer in the military police. His sculpture considers the conceptual and practical conditions of surveillance, reflecting the similarities between drones and children’s toy gliders. Both kinds of devices share simplified visual profiles, and they move silently through the air, and Duarte’s work comments poignantly upon the widespread presence of military and security efforts that enter the lives of children and their families in diverse regions across the globe.
Aaron Hughes is a veteran artist who explores the relationship between everyday life and the personal and collective traumas that occur both in and outside of warzones. Many of his projects look to dismantle systems of silence through the sharing of personal and collective experiences, such as his Dust Memories series of drawings, paintings, and collages that reflect the period surrounding his deployment in Iraq in 2003. Hughes has been central to the development of Celebrating People’s History: Iraq Veterans Against the War a collective print portfolio project that highlights the efforts of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) to bring the Iraq War to end, as well as to advocate for better physical and mental health treatment for veterans. The collaborative performance, Tea, extends the Iraqi ritual to an opportunity to talk about conflict and resolution.
Giuseppe Pellicano served as a medic in the United State Army from 2000 to 2004. His on-going photography series entitled Grenade addresses the issues of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on soldiers and their families. The grenade is a physical object that functions as a weapon of either self-defense or direct offense, but it is also a potent symbol for soldiers suffering from PTSD as they reintegrate back into their families and communities. In his work, Pellicano imagines weaponry in domestic settings.
Ehren Tool is a veteran artist who served in the Marines in the 1991 Gulf War. Working in ceramics, while his artist statement notes that “[he] just makes cups,” his works exceed being simply utilitarian or decorative objects as they are vessels infused with symbolic imagery to ignite conversation on the uncomfortable topic of war and its cultural effects. To hold one of his cups is to have a physical and emotional experience and to share the cultural weight of war.
Erin Trieb is an independent photojournalist with a long international record, and she is director of the Homecoming Project that uses visual journalism and media to raise awareness of veteran issues related to war and trauma. This project displays the devastating trauma and repercussions of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through photographic images of military deployment and the lives of veterans back home. Photographs explore issues of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), combat stress, substance abuse, domestic abuse, and suicide in relation to reintegration.
Regina Vasquez is a veteran artist who served in the Marine Corps from 1998 to 2002, and she is a survivor of military rape. Her project Fatigues Clothesline addresses the widespread but underrepresented issue of Military Sexual Trauma (MST). Engaging with other veterans, Fatigues Clothesline collects the stories of MST and PTSD survivors and helps them and others to regain a sense of empowerment and control as strong as the symbolism in the uniforms they once wore.
Read the article in the Express News here
UTSA Main Gallery
Department of Art & Art History
One UTSA Circle San Antonio, TX 78249
Contact: Laura.Crist@utsa.edu or 210-458-4391
Driving Directions:
The UTSA Art Gallery is located in the Art Building on UTSA’s Main (1604) campus. From I-10, take Exit #557 to UTSA Blvd. Metered parking is available in the Ximenes Ave Garage or in Bauerle Rd Lot 1. For more information: http://www.utsa.edu/auxiliary/visitor.html. Shuttle buses travel directly to the Art/Music Building.
