Media Highlights and Project Updates

The exhibition of Fire and Ice: Marine Corps Art from Afghanistan and Iraq has garnered some very nice reviews and media exposure. The James A. Michener Art Museum has two television and one radio piece posted to the exhibit's webpage on their site. So, if you'd like to see me in front of the camera and microphone go to http://www.michenermuseum.org/exhibits/fire-and-ice.php

Sculpture by Charles Sargeant Jagger

At the moment I'm working on two new sculptures. I've been particularly inspired by a WWI British sculptor named Charles Sargeant Jagger. In 1935 he published a "how to" book, which I was able to purchase through Amazon.com. His technique involves doing a full unclothed figure followed by dressing it in both uniform and gear.

Last month I attended an ecorche workshop at Studio Incamminati, a Philadelphia fine arts atelier, conducted by painter Robert Liberace. The term ecorche had never crossed either my mind or lips prior to signing up for this incredible class. Ecorche is French for flayed. Robert showed us how to create a figure from the bones up. His working knowledge of the skeleton and muscular system was as expansive as mine was lacking. So....I'm trying to make up for lost time. Here are the two pieces I have in progress.

Figure done in sculpey over wire armature. The sculpey can be heated with a hot air gun and hardened as you build up layers.

240 Gulf Machine Gunner-work in progress, plasticine over a sculpey/wire armature. I built the boots piece by piece, starting with the sole, adding the heel cup, and then the tongue and side panels. Right at the end I'll add the boot laces. The leg at the left will have a drop holster added, hence the flattened pocket. The right leg cargo pocket is hanging low.....bursting with everything from extra food to ammunition and AA batteries.

. Battle Pause in Husayba

Another medium I'm experimenting with is called yupo. Yupo is a synthetic paper that's very adaptable to watercolor. It allows for dramatic "puddleing" effects and its brillant white surface is the ideal compliment for watercolors.

Overwatch, New Ubaydi, Operation Steel Curtain-watercolor on yupo

Final Process and Finished Product.....In Bronze

Here is the final process and finished version of my first foray into sculpture. The local foundry that cast the piece is renowned for their skill in the lost wax technique. "The Skipper" now resides in the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General James Conway's office at the Pentagon.


The mold from which the wax casting is created.

The wax figure is touched up. The throat protector had to be molded seperately.

The wax figure coated and ready for the bronze pouring.

Initial bronze version fresh out of the mold prior to the patination process.

Sandblasted and ready for the patina to be applied.

Highly skilled foundry craftsman, RJ, preparing the surface.

Figure ready for the application of the final patina.

Whole figure heated........

Sprayed with acid......
.....and buffed out by hand using scotch bright and steel wool. This process is repeated multiple times.

Patina complete......almost.

Last step........heated paste wax.

It's Been A While

It has been quite a while since my last post. A lot has happened. Where to start?

First, my original blog, mdfay.blogspot.com, was blogjacked. As my previous post announced, thanks to a BBC link, my site's viewership went stratospherically off the charts. This, it turns out, was a mixed blessing. Someone decided that perhaps they could make a little extra fun money off of Fire and Ice. So they hacked in, changed the password, and made it theirs, sort of. There is no content at my old site, just a variety of links which I suppose are earning someone about three cents a month. Blogger was good enough to locate my content and repost it to mdfay1.blogspot.com with a new password.

Myself and Janis at the Michener opening.

Since the last posting I've been occupied primarily with all the preparations for the opening of my current exhibit at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The show, aptly titled Fire and Ice, opened the evening of July 7 with many friends and relatives gracious enough to come and share the festivities. I was honored to have, among the guests, the mother of Lance Corporal Nicholas G. Ciccone. She came to the show to see for the first time the portrait I did of her late son.

The artist with Mrs. RoseAnne Ciccone, mother of LCpl. Nicholas G. Ciccone

My Mom was in attendence as well. She's the lovely smiling woman in the center of the picture.

Several media venues in the metro Philadelphia area have done features and reviews of the show. WHYY, the Philly NPR station, did a five minute piece you can listen to at their website. The Broad Street Review did a review, as did the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Allentown Morning Call.

In my next post I'll bring up to date on my first sculpture, "The Skipper". The piece is finally cast and turned into the National Museum of the Marine Corps Art Collection.

Art, Misery and the Marines

“How to Be Miserable”

In my younger days dodging the draft, I somehow wound up in the Marine Corps. There’s a myth that Marine training turns baby-faced recruits into bloodthirsty killers. Trust me, the Marine Corps is not that efficient. What it does teach, however, is a lot more useful.

The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable.

This is invaluable for an artist.

Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swab jockeys, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because these candy-asses don’t know how to be miserable.

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt and humiliation.

The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.

-- Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle. New York: Rugged Land, LLC (2002).

Welcome BBC Readers...We've Topped 100,000 Visitors!

This weekend the BBC was gracious enough to host a slide show with a sampling of my artwork, and a link to this blog. My 'sitemeter' has gone off the scale with visitors. It is very interesting to read the wide variety of comments being left here at Fire and Ice. I want to assure all of you that I do read the comments and appreciate the earnestness and honesty informing the thoughts of the overwhelming majority of folks who've taken the time to leave a word or two. I want to invite those of you who may take exception to my political views to at least take the time to view artwork and photographs scattered throughout 125 postings.

Sometime this Saturday my viewership topped 100,000 and I want to recognize this milestone. I started this blog in September of 2005 merely as a way to keep family and friends informed of my adventures, and to have a place fellow Marines could go to see more of my artwork. It became so much more than I could have imagined and has led to things such as being featured on the BBC. It is somewhat ironic that the very first 'combat art' I ever sketched was a drawing of a sailor and a Marine aboard the USS Guam Christmas Eve 1990, during Operation Desert Shield, listening on a small shortwave radio to the BBC.

Listening to the BBC, Christmas Eve 1990

Maybe Islam Is Right About Pork

It's been quite awhile since I dragged my soapbox out and had a good rant. Here goes it.....

High up on my list of useful idiots is commentraitor Bill Maher. A couple weeks ago, after a rather lame bombing attempt on the life of Vice-President Cheney at the Bagram Airbase, he opined and lamented had Cheney been assassinated many lives would be saved. I have in the past commented here at Fire and Ice that the goals of Terrorism and Islamofascism are almost purely strategic in nature...namely making it on to the nightly American news with scenes of mayhem and carnage, and or deeply informing and influencing the words spewing from the mouths of pundits. Tactically they cannot defeat our troops going toe-to-toe, but strategically they can, and have eroded the fighting elan of our national will. Suicide bombers and their handlers know that tactically their murderous missions are exercises in futility. GIs will continue to walk the mean streets of Kabul and Baghdad, and locals will return to market places and mosques. The attack in Bagram on Cheney was tactical, however folks like Maher manage to turn these criminal events into strategic political victories. I leave it to you dear readers to decide who's demise would perhaps result in a lowering of terrorist instigated deaths. It's doubtful if Al-Qaeda et al is trying to influence Cheney's thinking with their suicide bombs.....influencing Maher and his ilk is another thing all together.

On another day, while channel surfing, I again came across Maher being interviewed by the equally useful idiot, Keith Olbermann. Maher was lamenting the Bush Presidency, which he characterized as a failed six year experiment in stupidity. He insisted that the next president had to be 'bright'. Now I'm absolutey certain that somewhere in his vast storehouse of genius opinions and lexicon of brilliant commentaries Mr. Maher has spoken with great eloquence about all the threats endured by democracy itself during the past six years. It's interesting that he is now advocating governance only by the bright.....this actually has a name, and it's not democracy, it's called an aristocracy. I wonder if Maher is contemplating an electorate limited to only the bright as well? (We certainly don't want the NASCAR guys voting in another numbscull now do we. No, what we need are only the uber-bright to vote, perhaps like the Yale students who burned copies of the Bill of Rights and the Ten Commandments on Ash Wednesday, and then marked their foreheads with the ashes.) Jim Crow laws did the trick for close to a century in the American South. Maybe it's time to revisit the concept.....let's call them Bill Maher laws....you got what on your SATs? Sorry, you can't vote. Or how about an IQ data base? 120 or higher gets to vote.....everyone else gets tickets to a monster truck show.

Congress passed a bill last week to basically defund the war in Iraq and set a withdrawal date. Apparently the bill was also heavily laden and lubricated through the system with generous portions of pork. Speaking of pork, a popular ABC talkshow, The View, has been getting a lot of attention due to the comments by one of it's commentators, comedian Rosie O'Donnell. Who knew she secretly acquired PhDs in History and Political Science. Perhaps Islam is right after all....pork in it's various forms may be the source of our fall from grace on the world stage.

Two other interesting things I came across recently are; 1. the insatiable appetite the Chinese and the Russians have for deforesting vast stretches of virgin woodlands (remember this next time you're at IKEA), and 2. The concerns the Olympic Committee has expressed about the pollution in Beijing and the effect this could have on athletic performance. I find these two issues interesting in light of the push by certain parties to aggressively confront global warming. Perhaps an inconvenient truth they need to address is only democracies are even remotely interested in doing anything substantive about environmental issues. Makes me wonder why these same folks are so keen to find fault with actively spreading democracy. Unless of course they assume that the best model of governance for the inforcement of enviromental initiatives is something a little more on the dictatorial side.

Finally, Iran is releasing the British sailors and Marines it illegally seized 13 days ago with great fanfare. (The Bush Administration needs to find out who their PR firm is. Churchill is no doubt rolling in his grave.) Syria is claiming to have brokered the Iranian release of these hostages. These are two nations we GIs know all too well are behind much of the chaos in Iraq. I liken this episode to a bank robbery where the bank begs the robbers to not only keep the money, but to deposit it in a high interest account. One thing our enemy can and do bank on is the predilection of some folks living over at the fourth estate to spend a little time marching in or closely behind the fifth column.

I hope all of you have a lovely Easter weekend. Janis and I will be heading up to my Mom's in Pennsylvania for an Easter Sunday feast with family and friends porking out on.......you guessed it, ham!

Heros

Sergeant Jeremiah Workman and Colonel John W. Ripley

I spent the better part of yesterday in the limelight doing a painting demonstration at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in the Global War on Terrorism Gallery. Dozens of visitors stopped, asked questions, oo'd and ah'd and generally fed my already over-stuffed ego.

The real treat for me however was seeing my old boss, Colonel John W. Ripley USMC (retired). Colonel Ripley, following his retirement from active military service, took on the helm of the Marine Corps History and Museum Division and sheparded us through the process that resulted in the National Museum of the Marine Corps becoming a steel and concrete reality.

He was waiting to take out to lunch one of the Marines who works at the museum, Sergeant Jeremiah Workman. What do these two stellar Marines share in common? They're both recipients of the Navy Cross, an award second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor. Amongst Marines the Navy Cross is virtually equal to the MOH. This is especially true in Colonel Ripley's case. On Easter Morning 1972 then Captain Ripley almost singlehandedly stopped the entire North Vietnamese Army dead in its tracks by blowing up the Bridge at Dong Ha. The phrase "Ripley at the bridge" is as well known to Marines as the Chosin Reservoir and the Iwo Jima flag raising.

These two gentlemen were gracious enough to let me photograph them. One of the great joys of being a Marine is experiencing the constancy of the Corps that transcends time and place, and having the opportunity to stand momentarily in the shadow of giants such as these two men. It is a truism that people of this calibre are humble even to the point of embarrassment over the fuss made with regards to their heroics.

The Inspiration

Captain Ross Parrish USMC-Commanding Officer F/2/1


Captain Phillip Ash USMC-Commanding Officer K/3/7

I finally tracked down pictures of the two captains who served as the inspiration for "The Skipper". I served with Captain Ross Parrish's company, Fox 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment both in Operation Steel Curtain, and in Hit for the December 15th general election and its lead up. Captain Phillip Ash is the CO of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, and I spent time with his Marines in Ramadi. These guys are the marrow of this nation.

The plasticine bust was handed over to the Wegner Foundry here in Fredericksburg this past Friday. In about a month the piece will be cast, after an rather involved process of creating a mold, working up the wax version that comes from the mold, and the final "lost wax" method of pouring a bronze bust. Once the bronze piece is created an additional process takes place creating the final patina. Sculpture is very collaborative. I'm on to my next piece.

Another reason I've been off-line this past month is due to having fallen in love. Yes, the old Gunner is head over heals in LOVE. Over Christmas my daughter and Mom were giving me a hard time about my singleness.....so I signed up for Match.com with the moniker of Jarheadmike. In very short order I met my sweetie, GIJanis, a Sergeant First Class in the US Army Reserve who spent 18 months in Iraq. She's got a blog of her own called American Commentary.

Our Current Debate

I have tried to stay away from commenting about the great debate occuring in both Houses of the US Congress with regards to the War in Iraq and the "surge". In war there are two concepts which, though intimately linked, are essentially different and at times in direct conflict with each other. One is called tactics and the other strategy.

In previous posts I have spoken about how the "I support the troops, but not the war" mentality says in effect "I support you tactically, but I oppose you strategically". Our enemy, both in Iraq and elsewhere, is not trying in any way, shape, or form to defeat us tactically. They are trying to defeat us strategically. They cannot stand toe to toe with us on the battlefield and win. However, they can defeat us in the realm of perception.

The stragegy of our enemy is simple.....use terror with impunity against any and all targets.

To vote against the surge, to vote to leave Iraq without stabilizing it is a vote in support of our enemies strategy......terror. We will be saying simply this, terror works. Building schools, rebuilding infra-structure, organizing and carrying out free elections, liberation from brutal dictators, etc, is a failed strategic position.

Finished......The Skipper

Well....here it is, sculpture #1 is done! I showed it to the curator of the Marine Corps Combat Art Collection, Charles Grow, on Friday and he was very, very happy with the result calling it Rodinesque. He just about made me swear a sacred oath to not touch it! (I have a nasty habit of not leaving well enough alone.)

Charlie is himself a combat artist, having covered Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Haiti, Somalia and Operation Enduring Freedom. He's also an accomplished photographer as well. There is no higher accolade for me than his thumbs up. He's asked me to contact a foundry here in Fredericksburg and start the process of getting it cast in bronze.

The piece, as I worked on it over the past couple weeks, became a haggard rifle company commander. Over the years I've tended to focus almost exclusively on sergeants and below, the grunts. But I've also carefully observed the late twenty-something captains who carry the burden of command with weary grace. The young Marines are lovingly lead and often painfully mourned by their commanding officer, the "skipper". Skipper is a term both respectful, and filled with warmth. It's the un-official moniker for a Marine captain.

As you look at these photos of the piece try and imagine it without the white plaster support. When it gets cast it will only be the plasticine portion.

*Click on images to enlarge