ARTIST STATEMENT

I just make cups.

I would like to steal my artist statement. Written in stone on the Indiana War Memorial Building is “To vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the world”.  I would like my work to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the world. That is a lot to ask of a cup.

After my experience in the Marine Corps, I am wary of the gap between the stated goal and the outcome. I am comfortable with the statement “I just make cups”. I’d like to trust that my work will speak for itself, now and over the next five hundred thousand to one million years.

Peace is the only adequate war memorial. All other war memorials are failures at best and are usually lies that promote the fantasy of war as glorious. I have made many failures and maybe some lies.

When I returned from the 1991 Gulf War I was surprised to see a G.I. Joe version of myself, my gas mask and my war, in stores, “for ages 6 and up”. I am compelled to make work that talks about the strange places where military and civilian cultures collude and collide.

My intention when I make and share my work is to make and share MY work. I have made and given away about 21,000 cups since 2001. I believe the cup is the appropriate scale to talk about war. The cups go into the world hand-to-hand, one story at a time.

My cups have been called my soldiers. The vessel has often been used as a symbol for a person. I make work you can drink out of and hold, in the hope that people will spend time with the work.

The images on the cups are often graphic and hard to look at. You may be for or against a particular war but I think it is too easy for us to look away. I think we as a country and as humans should look at what is actually going on.

ARTIST PROFILE

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  Gestures of Resistance: Occupation

  2010 Ehren Tool Exhibit  (3:41)

  Held at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon; this is the oldest continuously-running craft institution on America's west coast.

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  Service: Ehren Tool

  PBS Craft in America  (12:35)

  Ehren Tool was featured in an hour-long PBS documentary of veteran artists and craftsmen who make a vocation of their service-related work.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am an artist, organizer, and Iraq War veteran, whose work seeks out moments of beauty, poetry, and connection, in order to construct new languages and meanings out of personal and collective traumas. I use these new languages and meanings to create projects that attempt to de-construct systems of dehumanization and oppression.  

I was profoundly affected by having to unexpectedly leave college to deploy to Iraq as a truck driver with the 1244th Illinois Army National Guard in January of 2003. Within the first three months of my fifteen-month deployment, everything I understood about myself and the world crumbled, transforming my life.

After my deployment, I returned to the University of Illinois to study painting, where my work focused on deconstructing my experience in the military. I began to use art as a tool to confront issues of militarism and dehumanization. I created Dust Memories (2005), Ahmed (2006), Tourist Photographs of Iraq (2006), and Drawing for Peace (2006) during that period.

In 2006, I joined Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW); in 2007, I was a founding member of Warrior Writers. In 2009, I received an MFA in Art Theory and Practice from Northwestern University and became the national IVAW Organizing Team Leader (Organizing Director).

Since the beginning of my involvement with IVAW, I worked on art and organizing projects, including Warrior Writers, Combat Paper, Drawing For Peace, Operation First Casualty, Winter Soldier [video coverage], Demilitarized University, IVAW Field Organizing Program, Operation Recovery Campaign, War is Trauma Portfolio, and the March for Reconciliation and Healing.  

As curator for the "Surrealism and War" exhibit at the National Veterans Art Museum, which ran from May 26 to November 1, 2014, Aaron Hughes stated:

"This show is transformational for veterans who often feel isolated in their experiences. It is not only bringing an intergenerational group of veterans together but also showing the connection to one of the most powerful modern art movements: Surrealism. Which was dominated by veterans."

"It is so important for veteran artists to see themselves and their work in relationship to the history of art and artist. My generation of veterans is not the first to come home from war and express the realities and traumas of war through art. This exhibition brings that history to light and demonstrates the connection between what Iraq veterans are doing with what Vietnam, Korean, and World War One veterans have done."

ARTIST PROFILE

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  IVAW Operation Recovery at a church

  Aaron Hughes, Iraq Veterans Against the War  (8:18)

  In an era of forced redeployments and bad faith towards veterans, communities must reach out to military service members to help them to demand the right to heal.

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  Never The Same interview project

  Aaron Hughes, Curator, NVAM Art Exhibit   (3:32)

  The National Veterans Art Museum provides a space for visitors to challenge conventional assumptions and to experience a transformative sense of meaning.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Art allows us to renew ourselves and to express our psychological awakening to the deeper meaning of life. It gives expression to the ineffable. It can bring people together to act for the good of another person, a community, or the entire world. I choose to use words and music for their transformative power, particularly where social injustice remains.

Much of my life has been devoted to my love of music, and it has enabled me to travel extensively, to perform, to share, to teach, and to learn.  It was an exploration of music in world cultures that led to my desire for greater spiritual awareness and a dedication to peace activism. Music for art's sake was not enough.  I needed to communicate a social justice message that would have an impact.

Swami Harshananda wrote in the foreword of my recent book, The Spiritual Power of Nonviolence: "If wars are born in the minds of men, so is peace. The basis for peace lies in the deep-rooted conviction about the power of goodness."  That is, while nonviolence is necessary, it is not a sufficient condition for a peaceful life.  It is through universal love - a deep respect for life and for justice - that we derive the power to transform conflict, and turn the negative energy it generates into a positive force.

As a writer, a lecturer, and an ordained interfaith minister, I examine and work to set up a dialogue on positive peace-building within various religious traditions by focusing on common teachings, values and symbols that are shared by the great world religions.

I am available for recitals, group discussions, lectures and classroom presentations. You can contact me by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or through Facebook:  George Wolfe on Facebook.

    - George Wolfe

• The Spiritual Power of Nonviolence: Interfaith Understanding for a Future Without War
   
  Religion and violence—the two concepts seem incompatible given the emphasis in religion on virtue, love, forgiveness and compassion. Yet many scriptures contain martial images and stories of god-inspired military conquest. The Spiritual Power of Nonviolence confronts this theological contradiction, arguing that martial images and symbols found in religious texts are often meant to be interpreted as metaphors for an inner spiritual struggle and should never be used as a justification for war.   [Explore the website created for this book here.]
           
  Verses Re Versus

   

  This new poetic form is constructed so that the second stanza of each poem            
  is the first stanza with the words arranged in reverse order.            
           
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• Verses Re Versus: #5
   
  "Flags wave.
   We reason the war is over.
   Is night forgotten? Our
   loss, our celebration?
   Painful parades, our
   lessons unlearned.
    
               * * * * *
    
  "Unlearned lessons?
   Our parade's painful
   celebration, our loss,
   our forgotten night is
   over! Is war the reason we
   wave flags?"
• Verses Re Versus: #7
   
  "Eyes staring
   through darkened years,
   frail, with quivering lips,
   shatter memories
   frozen in wilted words.
    
               * * * * *
    
  “Words wilted in frozen
   memories shatter
   lips quivering with frail
   years darkened through
   staring eyes.”
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  George Wolfe in Performance

  Tableaux de Provence by Paule Maurice, Mov't 4   (4:48)

  George Wolfe, alto saxophone; Holly Hanauer, piano. Live performance in Pruis Hall, Ball State University.

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  George Wolfe in Performance

  Brilliance by Ida Gotkovsky, Mov't 3   (2:43)

  George Wolfe, alto saxophone, Robert Palmer, piano. Live performance in Pruis Hall, Ball State University.

 Listen to other musical performances featuring George Wolfe on his YouTube channel here.             

ARTIST PROFILE

George Wolfe, a Ball State University professor emeritus of music, is an accomplished classical saxophonist with an extensive musical repertoire inspired by world cultures. He has performed concerts and has been heard on radio stations throughout the United States and abroad, and has appeared as a soloist with such ensembles as the The Royal Band of the Belgian Air Force, the World Band at Disney World, the Chautauqua Motet Choir, and the Indianapolis Children’s Choir. 

Critics have praised his playing as "brilliant and moving." His recordings have won praise from Steven Ellis of Fanfare Magazine and jazz great David Baker. George Ruckert, MIT world music professor, has referred to George Wolfe as "a major musician of our time."

Dr. Wolfe is featured on eight volumes of the compact disk series, America's Millennium Tribute to Adolphe Sax, and on his two most recent CDs, Le Saxophone Melodieux and Le Saxophone Extrordinaire. In 1997, Ball State University awarded Dr. Wolfe its Outstanding Creative Endeavor award for his CD entitled Lifting the Veil.  

Also, Dr. Wolfe has presented master classes at the Paris Conservatory, Indiana University, and the Interlochen Center for the Arts, and he has taught as an artist-in-residence at Arizona State University, Klagenfurt Conservatory (Austria), the University of Saskatchewan (Canada), and at the University of San Jose in Costa Rica.

George Wolfe served as Director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Ball State University with distinction, and he continues to play a major role there as Coordinator of Outreach Programs. As a peace educator, he frequently lectures both within and outside the United States on topics related to nonviolence, peace studies, academic freedom, and the role of the arts in social activism. Professor Wolfe also has been an active performer of protest music, and has given numerous performances of Martin Wesley Smith’s video-acoustic composition, Weapons of Mass Distortion, that was written as a reaction to the 2004 U.S.-led preemptive invasion of Iraq.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am an artist, organizer, and Iraq War veteran, whose work seeks out moments of beauty, poetry, and connection, in order to construct new languages and meanings out of personal and collective traumas. I use these new languages and meanings to create projects that attempt to de-construct systems of dehumanization and oppression.  

I was profoundly affected by having to unexpectedly leave college to deploy to Iraq as a truck driver with the 1244th Illinois Army National Guard in January of 2003. Within the first three months of my fifteen-month deployment, everything I understood about myself and the world crumbled, transforming my life.

After my deployment, I returned to the University of Illinois to study painting, where my work focused on deconstructing my experience in the military. I began to use art as a tool to confront issues of militarism and dehumanization. I created Dust Memories (2005), Ahmed (2006), Tourist Photographs of Iraq (2006), and Drawing for Peace (2006) during that period.

In 2006, I joined Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW); in 2007, I was a founding member of Warrior Writers. In 2009, I received an MFA in Art Theory and Practice from Northwestern University and became the national IVAW Organizing Team Leader (Organizing Director).

Since the beginning of my involvement with IVAW, I worked on art and organizing projects, including Warrior Writers, Combat Paper, Drawing For Peace, Operation First Casualty, Winter Soldier [video coverage], Demilitarized University, IVAW Field Organizing Program, Operation Recovery Campaign, War is Trauma Portfolio, and the March for Reconciliation and Healing. 

I am currently working on an ongoing project, TEA. When someone sits, sips, and reflects over a cup of tea, a space is created to ask questions about one’s relationship to the world: a world that’s filled with dehumanization, war, and destruction; a world that is filled with beauty, love, and humanity.

ARTIST PROFILE

•  

  IVAW Operation Recovery at a church

  Aaron Hughes, Iraq Veterans Against the War  (8:18)

  In an era of forced redeployments and bad faith towards veterans, communities must reach out to military service members to help them to demand the right to heal.

•  

  Never The Same interview project

  Aaron Hughes, Curator, NVAM Art Exhibit   (3:32)

  The National Veterans Art Museum provides a space for visitors to challenge conventional assumptions and to experience a transformative sense of meaning.