The Grady Myers drawing "Still Life with CIB" is on display in Surrealism and War, which opens this Memorial Day at the National Veterans Art Museum. The work is among others from the NVAM's permanent collection that are included in the six-month exhibit and series of special events. War is almost by definition a surreal enterprise. That's certainly the impression I got when listening to Grady tell the stories that we captured in his memoir "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War." It's interesting that Grady chose the Combat Infantry Badge as the subject of this, the most abstract of his war-related works. Among his military decorations, he was most proud of the CIB. It meant he hadn't just served in the Army. He'd seen battle -- and, as this piece suggests, paid a price for that experience. This disheveled soldier does not fit his clothes and seems disjointed, harried. He has seen a lot. Are his eyes closed against memories of violence and fear? Surrealism, write the exhibit curators, is "an attempt to revolt against the inherent contradictions of a society ruled by rational thought while dominated by war and oppression. Surrealism seeks expression of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason and free of aesthetic and moral preoccupation. It is this same absence of control exercised by reason that many combat veterans seek to explore and express after their experiences in war." "Still Life with CIB" is one of four pieces that Grady created in the 1990s for a traveling exhibit of work by Vietnam veterans. That project evolved into the Chicago museum, which is the repository of Grady's original Vietnam-related artwork. That art is reproduced in "Boocoo Dinky Dow." But the small-format book doesn't do justice to the original poster-sized works. It's wonderful to know they are occasionally brought out for public viewing.
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'The Mascot' by Grady Myers As I prepare for this Saturday's reading at the National Veterans Art Museum, I have been having a flashback to the 1980s. I am in the rotunda of the nation's Capitol where I'm viewing, with a combination of sadness and fascination, a traveling exhibit organized by the Vietnam Veterans Art Group. Sadness because so many of the works depict violence and loss. Fascination because the exhibit, "Reflexes and Reflections," has many excellent and compelling images -- including three drawings and a collage created by Grady Myers. Grady and I were married then. I don't recall how he connected with the Chicago-based art group; we lived in Boise and Spokane during the '80s. He was excited to create work for the show. It was the first time he had tackled Vietnam War art since illustrating "Boocoo Dinky Dow," the memoir that we wrote together in the late 1970s. While the book manuscript was packed away and not published until after Grady died in 2011, the Vietnam Veterans Art Group kept evolving. The traveling art exhibit found a permanent home in Chicago's Loop and became the Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in 1996. Its mission expanded to included artists from other wars and in 2010 it was renamed the National Veterans Art Museum. Last fall, the museum moved to a new Chicago location. You can read more about it here. Take time to nose around nvam.org. The museum's entire collection of art is available online. Of course, there's nothing like seeing art in person. Tours are free. Grady's drawing titled "The Mascot," shown here, is a favorite with young museum visitors. At the April 20 reading of "Boocoo Dinky Dow," the museum collection will expand with the contribution of his original art from the book. Victor with Julie at Pullman reading Bridging the gap between composition explosives and literary composition, Victor Villanueva Jr. survived combat in Vietnam and went on to become a distinguished professor of English. Not bad for a high school dropout. When one of his colleagues at Washington State University told me Victor served in the Army in Vietnam, I contacted him out of the blue and asked if he would be the guest reader at "Boocoo Dinky Dow" book event at the Neill Public Library in Pullman. I explained that I always invite a man, usually a veteran, to join me at readings to give voice to Grady, who died in 2011. Victor graciously agreed. When he read Grady's memoir, he was astounded to realize he may actually have seen Grady in Vietnam. "I was in country August 1968 to September 1969. Grady and I were in the same place during much of the same time! This is eerie!" Victor's 13 months in country -- six months as a grunt, the rest as a clerk -- overlapped with Grady's three months. He'd been to Fire Support Base 30, where Grady's squad leader gave him the nickname Hoss and made him an M-60 machine gunner. He was also at Blackhawk, a camp where he heard the explosions that Grady describes in "Boocoo Dinky Dow," one of the many exploits that cemented Charlie Company’s reputation as Combustion Charlie. It was, officially, C Company, 1st of the 8th, 4th Infantry Division. Victor's best friend was its clerk. "His name was Charles Shinedling, so we called him Shingaling like the song and the dance," said Victor, whose own buddies called him Vanilla Wafer, a riff on his Puerto Rican last name. Victor was also a clerk in the first 1st of the 8th, working for Delta Company. Before that, in combat mode, he carried a radio with an antennae that extended above his head. It was heavy. Victor, who is not a big guy, laughed as he recalled falling backwards onto the ground every time he hopped off a helicopter. Grady's story brought back intense memories for Victor. Such as seeing a buddy die, intestines spilled onto the ground. He described how his squad once fired madly at night-time movement in the jungle, discovering in daylight that they had decimated a record-sized Bengal tiger. Victor's stories, along with his thoughts on the draft system and racism’s role in war, enriched the Pullman reading. At the upcoming "Boocoo Dinky Dow" event at the National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago, the guest reader will be a veteran who was too changed by Vietnam to finish college and live out his dream of being a teacher. Now, he uses art to teach younger generations about the impact of war. |
Julie Titone is co-author of the Grady Myers memoir "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War." Grady was an M-60 machine gunner in The U.S. Army's Company C’s 2nd Platoon, 1st Battalion, 8th Regiment, 4th Infantry Division in late 1968 and early 1969. His Charlie Company comrades knew him as Hoss. Thoughts, comments? Send Julie an email. Archives
November 2018
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