Tacoma War is Trauma Veteran Art Show

Join us Saturday July 14th at 5pm for the final South Sound showing of the War is Trauma veteran art portfolio.  Light refreshments will be provided, and members of the Washington State chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War will be on hand to share our plans for our August Operation Recovery outreach drive at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.  Operation Recovery is our campaign to stand up for service members' right to heal and end the war in Afghanistan.  Over 10,000 service members are currently in Afghanistan from Lewis-McChord and another 4,000 will be joining them in the fall.  Many of those scheduled to deploy are still trying to heal from trauma and injuries from previous deployments, or simply their time in the military.  If injured and traumatized service members were kept home to heal, the military would lack the personnel to continue the occupation of Afghanistan.  Join us on the 14th and help us stand up for justice at Lewis-McChord and in Afghanistan. The War Is Trauma is a portfolio of handmade prints produced by the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative in collaboration with the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). This portfolio transpired out of a street poster project, from November 2010, which a number of Justseeds artists provided graphics for Operation Recovery. Posters were pasted in public, replacing many corporate advertisements, to focus public attention towards the issues not being discussed - GI Resistance, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), sexual assault in the military or Military Sexual Trauma (MST), and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The action led to another collaboration between Justseeds and IVAW - an “Operation Recovery” booklet published by Printed Matter in NYC and currently the War is Trauma portfolio. For this project over 30 artists from Justseeds, IVAW, and our supporters have each created a print that supports our goals of supporting service member and veterans right to heal, GI resistance, challenging the culture of militarism in the US, and ending the war in Afghanistan. The prints are housed within a handmade paper cover from the Combat Paper Project – paper whose source material derives from military uniforms that veterans have cut into small piece, mixed with water, and pulped into paper as part of the healing process. Drew Cameron of the CPP writes, “The batch that I made for the portfolio is mostly created from Army Combat Uniforms that we were worn with the Stryker battalions out of Fort Lewis, WA. These are the same guys who rolled out of Iraq early back in July 2010. I also added Egyptian cotton to strengthen it. I like to imagine that the mill workers who made the cloth I used were the same one’s rising up last spring.”