Art to Heal the Wounds of Vietnam Vets

The healing of the Vietnam veteran has been a long, painful trail--with more clicks to go.

Counseling--often by those whose only credentials are sympathy and having been there--brought many minds back from bloodied jungles. An ebony marble wall in Washington quieted others. A parade in Los Angeles, a homecoming day in San Diego, a course at UC Santa Barbara, new and good movies, a lot of well-written books, several memorials, broader networks of veterans organizations, greater acceptance and less rejection by more communities. . . .

Now art has become the medic.

“Healing the Wounds: Vietnam Veterans and the Arts, 1965-1987” opened Wednesday at the San Luis Obispo Art Center. Works by 40 Vietnam vets who have set their war to poetry, sculpture, paintings and drama will be displayed through Nov. 22. A tour to Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Jose and Monterey is being assembled.

“Historically, it is one of the strongest statements I have ever seen,” said Leslie Freeland of Cambria, the artist who co-visualized and is coordinating the show for the Vet Center of Santa Barbara and Vietnam Veterans of America. “Artistically, it is quite valid . . . with everything communicating the Vietnam experience, the artists’ responses, their feelings, their reaching for something after returning from the war.”

At least four of the artists, Freeland continued, were unsettled vets who took up painting and sculpting at the suggestion of their counselors. Others happened on the therapy. All are communicating, even exorcising their hurt through art, she said, because “when you have something going on inside and you need to release it, you can (through the medium of art) take that feeling and materialize it as an actual physical entity.

“Once you’ve externalized, it’s out there where other people can see it and relate to it. Sure, you can tell people how you feel. But it’s not the same as giving it shape and form you can see, touch and feel.”

Freeland--neutral to the Vietnam hangover until 1982 when she saw its effects on a man she loved--had never quite understood the 24-hour syndrome, the trauma of returning veterans who went from a Ban Me Thuot firefight to Anaheim and peace in a single day of jet travel.

“There’s a piece in the show made from cast resin and found objects, and on the left side is a Vietnam flag with a bullet hole in it,” Freeland explained. “Moving to the right are footprints of combat boots tracking red Vietnamese mud on to runway asphalt and then a sidewalk with beer-can tabs and cigarette butts in the gutter.

“Now I somewhat understand the 24-hour experience. Now I have something other than the intellectual description to go on.”

There is a bronze by Donnie Shearer of Newbury Park, once a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant, a combat photographer. It is of a hand, life-size, bound by barbed wire, leather thongs and chains. It is the hand of a POW.

“When I took it out of the crate, I didn’t want to let it go,” Freeland said. “When I read some of the poetry, I wept.”

Shearer, 45, still weeps at his visions of the war. When he returned from Dong Ha in 1969, he was overaggressive, uncaring, self-destructive and prone to nightmares and fist fights.

He still is not free of the confusion. But sculpture is releasing his frustrations, removing the bad pictures and building some final escape from Dong Ha.

“When I look at what I’ve made, I can see the struggle and the pain of the person or the incident,” Shearer said. “There’s a lot of feeling in it, a lot of grief, a lot of release . . . but I don’t know how I do it; it just happens.

“Pennington. Garrison. Gelb. Sickler. Perkins, who was killed winning the Medal of Honor the hard way. All young kids I lost.

“I guess you could say by sculpting them, I’m bringing them back.

“And I kinda think they’re not dead. . . .”

“Healing the Wounds: Vietnam Veterans and the Arts, 1965-1987.” San Luis Obispo Art Center, 1010 Broad St., San Luis Obispo. Noon to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday until Nov. 22 ; (805) 543-8562.