Tag Archives: Art

Art on exterior of the Veterans Museum on the Capitol Square

Painting including Will Williams, Veteran for Peace/Vietnam Veteran—along the front of the Wisconsin Vets Museum (30 W. Mifflin Street, Madison, Wisconsin.)

Photos by P.T. McMahon [Heartland Images Instagram ] taken 23 Dec 2020

 

more on Will…

Patriots Defend the Country

Poser Patriotism is Fake Patriotism

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Doug Moe, WI State Journal, 27 Oct 2009

Vet’s struggle with Vietnam captured in ‘The Good Soldier’

Will Williams had this friend in Vietnam, DeMarchi, and they sang doo-wop together. “We were just tight,” Williams was recalling Tuesday. They also went on patrol together, and that’s when DeMarchi got hit.

“His brains fell out in our hands when we were moving him,” Williams would recall later. He sat with the corpse in a bomb crater overnight. That night has never left him, though Williams was sitting a world away this week, literally and figuratively, sipping from a coffeehouse cup in Fitchburg. He wore a green T-shirt that read: “Veterans for Peace.” But here’s the thing. It wasn’t that awful night that turned Williams into a peace activist. If anything, at first, seeing his friend die did the opposite.

 

“The more friends that were killed,” he said quietly, “the more hateful I became. I became an animal. If I couldn’t make a kill it bothered me.” It took years, decades really, for Williams to become an anti-war activist. His journey is one of five chronicled in a documentary film, “The Good Soldier,” that will play Nov. 11, Veterans Day [2009], at Sundance. Williams will be there to answer questions after the screening.


Official Website: The Good Soldier movie

War Stories: ‘The Good Soldier’ Examines the Cost of Combat

International Day of Peace Event at The Highground Memorial Park

Day of Peace 

Monday, September 21 at 1pm at the Peace Dove

Link to Peace Event on Highground Website

Directions to Highground

 

For peace-loving people in Northern Wisconsin, there will be “thoughtful words, acoustic music, zero politics…a gathering of fellowship to hopefully turn people’s thoughts toward peace, tolerance, joy,” at the Dove Mound in Highground Veterans Memorial Park, W7031 Ridge Rd, Neillsville WI 54456.


The peace event will begin at 1 p.m. on International Peace Day, Monday, September 21. Billed as “a good gathering of fellowship,” the Dove Mound was designed by Veterans For Peace Chapter 25 member David Giffey, a Vietnam war veteran, in 1985. It was built and dedicated in honor or POWs and MIAs in 1989, and is 100-feet in length, 130-feet in width, and 6-feet in height. Howard Sherpe (1944-2016), an Army medic in Vietnam, was a co-founder of the Highground project and chair of the design committee.

 

Sherpe wrote: “…what began as a memorial for POW-MIAs has taken on a much greater significance…it has developed a life of its own and has become a symbol of the peace we all seek.” The Native American influence is evident at the Dove Mound. Wisconsin has the greatest concentration of effigy mounds in the world. John Beaudin (1946-1993), a First Nation attorney from Madison, spoke during the Dove Mound dedication ceremony.

 

Beaudin, a veteran of the Vietnam war, said: “This effigy mound is a spiritual place where you can come and let your mother, the earth, hold you…leave your troubles and cares on the mound, as you walk away renewed and refreshed.”

Highground Veterans Memorial Park Website Home Page

Effigy Mound Historical Marker

 

Horror of war captured in art – Display in Gallery 211 showscases work of soldier turned activist

Originally posted on TheClairion

Ana Bon, Art Director

Allie Christensen/Clarion “Long Shadow” by David Giffey is on dispay through Sept. 30. Giffey will be at the artist’s reception on Sept. 22 from noon to 2 p.m.

Paintings about remembrances of the Vietnam War currently hang on the walls of Gallery 211 at Madison College’s downtown campus.

David Giffey, peace activist and war veteran, has found his “Long Shadow” series of paintings to be a peaceful way of confronting something terrible.

“I feel these are anti-war paintings,” said Giffey, sitting in the center of his gallery exhibition. “If someone disagrees with me, that’s their right, they don’t have to look.”

You can find elements of Giffey’s original black and white photographs in each of his paintings.

Next to each painting, you can read an expert from the personal journal that Giffey kept during combat.

“It’s a very private kind of journal but I share parts of it sometimes, ” he said. The chosen entries best describe Giffey’s memories and emotions regarding the paintings.

“Long Shadow” is a series of paintings that is different from Giffey’s preceding artwork. In contrast to his prior work, these paintings were done more quickly, and the coloration much redder, expressing the violence and his emotional outlook as an artist. He has decorated churches and painted murals, but these paintings are a more personal expression.

“I can’t imagine and I’ve never heard of a visual artist who tried to illustrate anything about the violence of war in any way other than just shocking violence imagery, and that is really what war is about, there is nothing romantic or peaceful about it,” he said.

“I hope that whoever really takes the time to examine, to look at the photographs, to read the labels, will realized that militarism and the traditions of militarism, really, really need to be examined,” said Giffey. Giffey’s paintings are not only an artistic expression, they are also a form of self-awareness.

“While I was in Vietnam in the war, I became very convinced that it was a terrible mistake,” said Giffey. “That we, American soldiers, should not have been there. It was not our concern.”

Giffey grew up on a very small dairy farm in Fond du Lac county in Wisconsin. He attended UW-Oshkosh but was really interested in writing and got a job with a newspaper. At that time, the ‘60s, if you weren’t in college, you were eligible to be drafted in the military. Giffey leaned towards writing over college and was drafted in 1964.

“Even though I had been politically active, I really hadn’t been aware of the south east Asia and Vietnam as a potential place where there would be a war. However, about a year later, I found myself on a ship going to Vietnam,” said Giffey.

When he was drafted for Vietnam, he was first trained as an artillery gunner, then reassigned to become the assistant editor of for the first infantry division. It was his duty to go into combat missions along with other soldiers to take photographs.

As soon as Giffey came back from war in 1966, he joined the peace movement

“I go to high schools and try to let young people know that there are alternatives to the military,” he said. “After the war in Vietnam, it was clear to me that I had to try to work for peace and justice whenever possible. It’s a helpful kind of work for me, just like visual art and writing, because it is non-violent.”

“My time in the Army and the war never leaves my mind. It was a difficult time and I will always try to overcome my participation in the military by following a peaceful path.”


Artist reception will be held Sept.22 at the Downtown Campus, with refreshments provided from noon to 2 p.m.

To see more of Giffey’s artwork you can visit davidgiffey.com.