Music Credits: “Some Are More Equal,” composed and performed by Hans Teuber and Paul Rucker, from the CD Oil.l
Rich McAfee: My name is Richard McAfee. I go by Rich. Retired Air Force. Did 21 years. I throw on the wheel. I do the clay on the wheel. Much harder than you would ever think. Which is amazing. It really requires a lot of concentration and focus and patience. Developing the patience. Developing the fine muscle movements to get the clay to do even a fraction of what your mind is trying to tell you to do.
Jo Reed: That was veteran Rich McAfee, talking about IMPArt – Injured Military Personnel in Art. It’s an outreach program created by the Art League in Alexandria, Virginia. And this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed.
Since 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Department of Defense have partnered to support creative art therapies for service members with traumatic brain injury. This has occurred at two military medical facilities. In late October, the DoD and the NEA announced the expansion of this healing arts partnership into Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network. The expanded Creative Forces program places creative art therapies at the core of patient-centered care at 10 additional clinical sites. And it increases access to therapeutic art activities in local communities for military members, veterans, and their caregivers.
The NEA is also beginning to work closely with local and regional arts agencies and nonprofits to develop and support community-based arts programming that allows service members to continue exploring art practices as part of their healing process. One community based arts program that stands out for its outreach to service members is the Art League’s IMPArt program. I spent a recent afternoon in the various studios of the IMPArt program speaking to service members and teachers alike.
Here’s Suzanne Bethel. She’s Executive Director of the Art League.
Suzanne Bethel: The Art League is a visual arts nonprofit. We have a mission to nurture the artist. We do that through a school that enrolls 6000 students. We have an art gallery that has a membership of 1000 people. And we have community outreach programs, one of them being the IMPArt program. The IMPArt program started as an impulse. I was having a conversation with someone who had come to one of our openings and she was explaining how much her art classes and her participation in art shows meant to her during her cancer treatment. That was about five years ago. And I kept on coming across, as we all did, reports about retuning injured military personnel. And in this area of the country we certainly see Walter Reed and Fort Belvoir and they’re sort of iconic discussion points. So just started having a conversation with some of the other artists here at the Art League and so I thought, well we can do that. We can try that. We’re naturally set up to be a home for that kind of program. And Blair seemed the person to kick this off and I have to say that it’s succeeded beyond our wildest expectations. It’s really been an extraordinary process.
Jo Reed: The Blair Suzanne referred to is Blair Meerfield. He’s the ceramic department chair for the Art League school and he runs the IMPArt program. Their idea was pretty simple: reaching out to service members, many of whom were in therapy in one form or another, and inviting them to use the resources of the Art League. Getting the military interested and the IMPArt program off the ground, however, took a fair bit of work.
Suzanne Bethel: We kind of chuckled when we first started that when we showed up on the military base, well maybe they’ll let us in the door.
Blair Meerfield: But it was literally a cold call. We showed up and it’s this sea of camo and it’s just, it’s not my world and it was very intimidating at first. So we gave a little song and dance about who we are and what we want to do. And I could tell by the faces, a lot of them didn’t really take me serious because it’s not their world either. And we would set up potter’s wheels in their general meeting hall. And I’d demonstrate making pots. And I’d coax and talk one or two of them into trying it. And we got a few coming in that way. That was probably five years ago now. And I think when they realized that we were legitimate, and number two we weren’t going to go away. It wasn’t a flash in the pan. We were offering this program they started coming.
Jo Reed: But it took the Art League some time to figure out how the program could work best for service members.
Suzanne Bethel: When the program first started, we had set up a couple of art courses on site at Walter Reed but there was just something missing about the energy of that. One of the things that we put out there, because we had multiple conversations with the idea that this isn’t-- we’re not looking to become a government contractor. We’re not even really running this the way you would a traditional outreach nonprofit. We’re just saying we’re going to make this space available. We’re just going to make this program available at this time. And if there’s one person in the room, there’s one person in the room. If there are fifteen people in the room, there are fifteen people in the room and we stop trying to think of it as a class, meaning it starts at 10:00 A.M. and it ends noon. We just say Wednesday is going to be a day and you can wander in.
Blair Meerfield: Yeah, we don’t have a curriculum or a syllabus. They come in and I just tell them whatever you want to do I’ll help you do it.
Suzanne Bethel: Blair is their artistic guardrail.
<laughter>
Blair Meerfield: Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. And so we just kind of stand off. And when they get into trouble or have an issue we’re there to help. And that’s about the extent of it. They get started on what they want to do and I help them succeed without getting too much in the middle of it. When they get stuck they can talk to me or one of my assistants and we walk them through it. They’re vested in it. All of a sudden, it’s their project.
Jo Reed: And the benefits are wide ranging.
Blair Meerfield: The beauty of it, one of the many beauty’s these people are undergoing a lot of therapy in the morning. And they can come here and they can get off the fort, the base, the post and they can have lunch. They can talk with their friends and the environment is completely different than they’re immersed in. So they come here and they see each other. They get involved with the program or a project. They enjoy it. And they want to come back next week. And to me that’s the biggest win. It allows them a place to be that’s number one safe. And it’s their room. They own that room.
Rich McAfee: Wednesdays are the day I look forward to the most in my week.
Jo Reed: Retired service member Rich McAfee.
Rich McAfee: The time here is, one, it’s spending time with people that there’s no judgment, there’s no preconceptions amongst us. It’s just, you know, we’re all the same. We’re all here. We don’t care. It’s let’s just have a good time. But it’s also a time that my brain doesn’t wonder where the Boogeyman is around the corner. I don’t notice the pain in my head. If it’s three hours, I take it.
Jo Reed: Suzanne Bethel.
Suzanne Bethel: I think Blair’s made it an incredible space for people because their connection is not only with the idea that they can come in and do art but it’s with the people in the room. So I really think it’s the relationships that have formed from you can come and do. And if you don’t want to talk about what you spend all of your time trying to address, you can do that in art and that’s your conversation. That’s what your-- that’s always going to give you an opportunity to have a chance to kind of talk to the person next to you.
Jo Reed: Captain Jennifer Thurston.
Jennifer Thurston: Beyond just learning a new skill and being creative, and having your work inspire you, being around other individuals where you feel like you’re in a safe place; that whatever you’re dealing with is okay. I have a pretty significant startle response, and I remember there was one time someone came up behind me and said something, but I didn’t know that they were there, and it scared me and I screamed. And it was one of those uncomfortable, awkward, like what happened to you? But here, there was just a hand on my shoulder, “Are you okay?” It’s just such a safe place. So you come here, and some people put on their headphones and they just work on the wheel or whatever their piece is. Sometimes I come here and I just speak with other soldiers and have hugs and handshakes.
Jo Reed: Like most of the service members coming to the IMPArt program, Captain Thurston is in the Warrior in Transition unit.
Jennifer Thurston: A soldier in transition is someone that has been injured or is ill while in the line of duty. And the Warrior Transition, their mission is to help the service member heal and recover to the best of their ability and to either transition back to duty, return to duty, or to transition into civilian society.
Jo Reed: Blair Meerfield.
Blair Meerfield: These people are getting fixed. And they go through a lot of emotional therapy and physical therapy. That unit’s job is to get them functional again and decide whether or not they retire. And if so, on what percentage of disability? Or if they get reassigned. So they’re kind of in limbo.
Jo Reed: Suzanne Bethel.
Suzanne Bethel: I think in some ways it’s just ideal that our program kind of hits at that time when they’re just in that how do I rediscover myself? How do I transition back? So we’re actually very lucky with the timing. And we’re in a nice physical location because we sit between Walter Reed and Fort Belvoir. It's an interesting part of the country to be in. We have a first-row seat to what people are going through all across the country when they’re coming back, especially those that are just trying to discover how to deal with complex injuries because that is really something that’s been amazing for us. Really most of the injuries in terms of who is walking through the doors it’s 90 percent TBIs. Traumatic brain injury. So that’s new for everybody.
Blair Meerfield: And PTSD.
Jo Reed: Suzanne Bethel is absolutely clear about what IMPArt is and what it is not.
Suzanne Bethel: It’s important to point out that the IMPArt program was never intended to be art therapy and it’s not an art therapy program. It’s been something that’s evolved and we’ve been humbled by the idea that it can produce therapeutic results. We’re not tracking that. And we’re not setting ourselves up to preach that we provide that kind of therapy. We’re just glad that in terms of the statements about those who have participated in the program that they found some resolutions in terms of their therapy goals. And I think that’s great. I think that's something that Walter Reed and Fort Belvoir are looking into through the Intrepid Center. And we have a connection with the Intrepid Center and that’s where we have a lot of referrals that come to the program. Art is a healing part of our world and I think that’s what they’ve discovered with this.
Jo Reed: Why the focus on working with clay? Why begin the program there?
Blair Meerfield: Clay is the perfect tactile medium from this.
Jo Reed: Blair Meerfield.
Blair Meerfield: It starts in your head, goes through your body to your hands. And I think that’s where the biggest challenges are sometimes. We’ve had people with vision issues that would see multiple images of things. They had to learn which one to deal with. And it’s a perfect tool for that.
Suzanne Bethel: And the reason why I was interested in seeing whether the program could start with clay was because it’s very immediate. The tools are your hands. When you are looking at the translations involved from representing the 3D world in 2D in drawing and painting there are so many little subconscious mechanisms that you have to go through that can add a layer of frustration. With clay, it’s there in your hands. It’s there for you to feel and touch and it kind of guides you through.
Rich McAfee: You know, working with the clay is-- it’s, being a guy, you’re kind of like, “Oh, whatever. This is a woman’s thing.”
Jo Reed: Retired service member Rich McAfee.
Rich McAfee: It is more manly to do that than beat on the metal, in a lot of aspects, because it’s all about dexterity and finesse. With the clay, you can’t just go in there and just brute force strength, force it. It takes patience and skill. The hardest part was developing the patience. Developing the patience. But the fine muscle movements to get the clay to do even a fraction of what your mind is trying to tell you to do, the bad days, when you’re here and you come in with a bad day and you sit there and you try and do something with the clay. I can’t tell you how many pounds of clay I’ve put back in the recycle bin because I couldn’t make it work. And I think that’s an important part of this, is that you can’t give up. You can’t force it. It’s all about finessing it. All right, you screw up. Fine. Do it again. And you keep doing it. But that’s where, you know, Blair and Carla and the people that work, that help out here, they’re fabulous. Because if you’re struggling and they see it, they’ll come over. They won’t do it for you, but they’ll kind of give you a little nudge and get you going back down the road. But they’re going to let you flounder for a minute first. To help you learn. It’s an amazing feeling to know, you know, you were struggling so much and then all of a sudden, here it is, you know. And you have that peace that you were just like, “Son of a bitch. That worked. Okay.” At the end of the day you have something tactile that you did, it’s usable. It’s not just something that you sit on a shelf. I drink coffee in the morning out of a mug I made here. And that’s, that’s wonderful. I love it.
Jo Reed: Veteran Army Staff Sergeant John Meadows, on the other hand, sculpts with clay and creates narrative art that tells his story. He suffered a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan in January 2013, which effects his vision and fine motor skills. Yet he’s a remarkable sculptor. His piece “Headache” is made of clay with iron oxide. And it’s both painful and horribly beautiful. A striking sculpture of a man’s head without a scalp. Instead there are twisted, grotesque branches springing from the top of his head, while the face beneath has the expression of bearing an exhausting weight. Here’s Sergeant Meadows.
John Meadows: And this right here’s the demons that everybody has in their head, could be anywhere from like a really bad headache that’s driving you nuts or something you saw or anything that’s just driving you nuts. And you want it to get them demons just to get out of your head. Just want them out. So that’s kinda what this represents. It’s something that was growing more in me, the more I wanted to do and I just feel natural at it when I couldn’t do nothing else, when I was like really bad when I first came. My eyesight was bad, you know, my fine motor skills and everything was like, I mean it really helped me because if you didn’t like it you could squish it. And redo it again. Plus, you could just sit there and play with the clay and you can feel it with your fingers and, you know, you could move your fingers through it.
Jennifer Thurston: It makes you smile to see your pieces.
Jo Reed: Captain Jennifer Thurston.
Jennifer Thurston: And so sometimes your “mistakes”-- and I’m using my little quotation marks-- your mistakes come out to be your greatest pieces. Like I would have never thought to have made a bend here or a crick there. So whatever it is, is what you feel like that’s what it was meant to be.
Jo Reed: For some service members, walking through the door at the Art League is the first and hardest step. Blair Meerfield.
Blair Meerfield: So many of these people I’ve talked to and they’ve taken months to come in. Their stories are fascinating. They’ll drive around the block.
Suzanne Bethel: Circle the block.
Blair Meerfield: And they won’t come in. For whatever reason they have. It’s real to them. They will come and they’ll drive around and they’ll go, “No, no, not this week. I can’t do it.”
Jennifer Thurston: It probably took me a year to get here.
Jo Reed: Captain Jennifer Thurston.
Jennifer Thurston: I honestly I was depressed and isolated for a really long time, as a lot of Soldiers in Transition do, and so it took me a long time to come out and interact with other individuals.
Blair Meerfield: But once they get in and realize that it’s a good place to be they’re comfortable here. And they start something and they enjoy it so much. We cover it up and they come back next week because they want to finish it.
Jennifer Thurston: Then I was hooked.
Blair Meerfield: It’s a joy to watch.
Jo Reed: Sergeant John Meadows.
John Meadows: The more I learn, the more I heal. You know, as I you know rehab with the clay and all that, it’s like it’s bringing me to the top. Because it’s helping me do things with my hands. It’s helped me, you know, to feel better about myself.
<Sound bite of hammering on metal>
Nate Bocker: My name is Nate Bocker. I am finishing up my time on active duty and getting ready to transition into the civilian world. And I am the blacksmithing instructor for the IMPart program with The Art League.
Jo Reed: Yes, you heard that correctly. The IMPArt program also teaches blacksmithing. It fires up a portable forge in one of the studios and the service members make everything from wall mounts to kitchen knives to pizza cutters. Nate Bocker.
Nate Bocker: I’ve been blacksmithing myself, bladesmithing, primarily, for about three and a half, four years now. And found it as a great way to relieve stress on my own and thought it might be something that would be able to help others. The guys that I’ve been working with were assigned to the Warrior Transition Unit at Belvoir mostly for issues around PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. And so the work that I’ve been doing with them, a lot of it had to do with what I realized for myself in dealing with the stress from previous deployments and just military life in general. It’s nice to have a creative outlet. And there’s really not much in the way of opportunities for that at Fort Belvoir. And on top of that, there’s a stereotype for a lot of military guys of, “Oh, you want me to do art?” And it’s a really great way to break past that stereotype and get them to really start examining. It’s not just that it’s art, it’s the act of creation. And so there’s a lot to be said for being able to use that as a stress reliever. You know, I think it’s something that’s fundamental to humans, the act of creation.
Jo Reed: Rich McAfee compares blacksmithing to working with clay, their similarities and somewhat surprising differences.
Rich McAfee: When you take a piece of steel and you heat it up to 1800 degrees, 2,000 degrees, it becomes malleable. Like a very, very stiff, stiff clay. And it moves very similar to the clay. Just requires a little more force to do it. But you have to remember, as you’re working it, you have to keep it that temperature. So there’s a lot of work it a little bit, put it back on the forge. Work it a little bit, put it in the forge. And it requires patience. And they’re, both of them, have such a steep learning curve. But the nice part about the metal is that if you go too far in one direction or another, you can to an extent, bring it back. It’s repairable. Whereas with the clay, you know, if you thin it out too much, well, you just put a hole. So you got to start over.
Jo Reed: Teacher Blair Meerfield has thought a lot about the similarities of working with these materials.
Blair Meerfield: It’s also about the discipline of process. When you’re dealing with clay and forging there are specific processes you have to go through. You can’t skip them. And that’s very important developmentally. And we’re getting some very good work in both those mediums.
Jo Reed: Nate Bocker points out that working with clay and blacksmithing requires focus and concentration.
Nate Bocker: It really draws you in, but it demands your attention. Between the physical skill required and some of the dexterity and the development of that, but also the fact that, you know, a forge that’s blasting at, you know, 26, 2700 degrees or higher, it’s really hard to miss when you’re standing next to it. It lets you know that it’s there. And so you constantly have this awareness of working around something that does have an inherent danger in it, but it’s controlled. And I think a lot of the guys are used to that. That’s something that goes hand-in-hand with a lot of fields in the military. You’re aware that there’s an inherent danger in some of the stuff that you’re working around, some of the stuff that you’re doing. And so I think, I think that’s part of the attractant for a lot of the guys.
Jo Reed: And not just the guys. Captain Jennifer Thurston is blacksmithing as well, despite her injuries.
Jennifer Thurston: It’s difficult for me because there’s a lot of pounding and with my spinal conditions, that’s been difficult for me. So it’s been a collaborative effort and I want to give a shout out to Blair and Nate and Rich for really helping me with that process. They have just been so encouraging and helpful and even though I’m limited in some of my physical abilities, they’ve not let that deter me or discourage me from being involved.
Jo Reed: Nate Bocker is very aware of how people with injuries can be discouraged from trying their hand at something that’s seen as strenuous, such as blacksmithing.
Nate Bocker: Any person that might, and I hate to use it this way, but this is the best way I can think to phrase it, marginalized. People that kind of get pushed to the side or told, you know, “Oh, you know, that’s not really a hobby that somebody in your condition can do.” I’ve had amputees do it. We had a guy that was a stroke victim. And it requires a lot of interaction on the part of the instructor, but I think the payoff is in seeing the look on their face when they’re actually doing something that otherwise they, you know, the average person is going to tell somebody that is going to be challenged that, “Oh, that might be a little bit too much for you.” And I’m not quite the one to do that. I’m the one that’s going to push them. You know, test your limits. Find out how far you can go.
Jo Reed: And as they test those limits, it also becomes clear that the service members and teachers who gather and create at the Art League have forged deep friendships. Ceramics teacher and IMPArt program director Blair Meerfield.
Blair Meerfield: One of the things I enjoy the most is I don’t have to do much sometimes. They help each other and it’s amazing to their sense of camaraderie. So for the most part my job is to keep the lights on and make sure they have stuff. But they really come in and they go to work, they enjoy the process. They own the room. They help each other. And they want to come back next week.
Rich McAfee: There’s a group of us. We’re here every Wednesday.
Jo Reed: Rich McAfee.
Rich McAfee: If you miss one week it’s not a big deal. If you miss two, there’s a, “Hey, what’s going on? Where are you?” And, you know, we all have our really bad days. Where you don’t want to leave the house and you just, you know, your head’s splitting, you feel like shit and you just, you want to die. You feel like you’re going to die. You have those days. And we all get it. And we’re there for each other for those days. You know, I have my service dog and if I’m doing okay, I’ll let her be kind of a therapy dog for other people, because I know that they need it just as much as I do. We are, as best as I can call it, a dysfunctional family around here. We all have our quirks. But we all love each other, so.
Jo Reed: Captain Jennifer Thurston.
Jennifer Thurston: It’s a family. It’s absolutely a family. I mean I’m restricted from driving for a variety of reasons and my son who’s 20 is my caregiver, so a shout out to Logan. And he’s doing a great job as a young person taking care of me, but he was taking care of errands for us, and I was in the barracks and I haven’t been able to be here for a couple of weeks, and Blair drove all the way out to Fort Belvoir and came to pick me up so I could make it here tonight. And like, who does that, but people that love you and support you. And so beyond me as a Warrior in Transition, these are my friends and my family forever.
Blair Meerfield: They are their own tribe. And I’m honored that they let us in. It’s not a place I expected to find myself. But it’s become perhaps the most important part of my week.
Suzanne Bethel: Dovetailing on what Blair was saying what has been so stunning for me is that we put so much energy into what our public faces are going to be and you think about how much psychic energy must go into how does a veteran transition back into a country that really doesn’t have a full understanding of what that experience must be like. And then to have an opportunity to kind of come in and create a sense of connection, create a sense of normalcy. You know, art is a great way to represent how we see the world. To work with this particular population it really drives home the point of how important and how invaluable it is to have accessible community based art to make that available to everyone. There’s an egalitarian approach to the program that’s so important and it’s been one of the most moving experiences that I’ve had.
Jo Reed: Nate Bocker.
Nate Bocker: The act of creation I think is something that’s inherent to human character. And you look at what people do, even in the most austere environment, they will find some way to make it personal, to say that they’ve been there.
Jo Reed: Captain Jennifer Thurston.
Jennifer Thurston: Expressing yourself through art, through human interaction, and building true friendships, built on understanding, because a lot of us have been in the same place, or those that haven’t but they really want to support you, they understand how beneficial this Art League has really been in donating their time and materials to soldiers.
Jo Reed: Sergeant John Meadows.
John Meadows: It’s opened up a whole new world for me. I mean, I just want to do so much art now. And I tell everybody that this is what saved me. And it did. It saved me.
Jo Reed: Those were voices from the Art League’s IMPArt program, Injured Military Personnel in Art. The yearly IMPArt art show is getting ready for it’s opening on Veterans’ Day in Alexandria’s apply named Torpedo Factory Art Center. It’s in Studio 8. The IMPArt show will run throughout November. If you’re in the DC area, go by and see the ceramics, both utilitarian and narrative pieces. And the blacksmithing. All created by the veteran artists in the IMPArt program. For more information, go to theartleague.org. You’ve been listening to Art Works, produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed. Thank you for listening.
