Existing comment:
Marine Corps Combat Art Collection:
The Marine Corps' tradition of capturing the experiences of its service members extends back unofficially to WWI and officially to WWII. From his experiences leading Marines in combat against the Germans in France, John W. Thomason, Jr. illustrated and penned a war memoir, Fix Bayonets! During WWII the Marines instituted a formal combat art program under the guidance and vision of Brigadier General Robert Demig. His orders to the combat artists were simple and to the point -- "Go to war, do art." Today the Marine Corps Combat Art Collection and Program is managed by the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The Marine's art collection contains well over 8,000 works of original art across a broad spectrum of mediums. Among the collection are works by both official and unofficial combat artists. The public, academics, and arts writers have all marveled at the depth of the collection and the intimate, often deeply psychological perspective, the art of the Marines portrays. Among the art in the collection, are images of Marines recovering from battle-wounds.
In 1942, John Everette Smith graduated from high school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania and started attending classes at the Museum School of Art in Philadelphia. By the end of 1943, Smith was a Marine private headed towards the South Pacific and combat. Everette was severely wounded by a burst of shrapnel 47 days after landing on Okinawa in 1945. For a time it looked like he might lose his shattered right arm, but US Navy surgeons were able to save it. He would spend two long years recovering from his wounds -- much of the time was devoted to transferring his artistic skills from the now impaired right hand to his left. To this end, Smith spent long hours patiently training his left hand by sketching fellow patients. One of his techniques in regaining control was to graph the drawing surface. In 1950 he finally graduated from the Museum School with a degree in art education. Smith would spend his professional life as an elementary art teacher in Pennsylvania.
Charles G. Grow served in the Marines as a combat camera officer and as an official combat artist. Today Grow is the deputy director of the National Museum of the Marine Corps. As a combat artist he deployed to Somalia, Haiti, Operations Desert Storm and Shield, and Operation Enduring Freedom. From the mean streets of Mogadishu to the mountains of Afghanistan, Grow has captured the life and faces of fellow Marines. In 2010 he extended his artistic coverage to creating images of recovering Marines at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Tampa, Florida. |