Unofficial Partners

The Joe Bonham Project is an outreach of the International Society of War Artists. ISWA is a small group of artists who, to put it as simply as possible, have gone to war and done art. We were first brought together in 2007 by Francis DiTommaso for an exhibit at the New York School of Visual arts called Testimony to War. Since then myself, Richard Johnson, Steve Mumford, Peter Buotte, Kris Battles, Conway Bown, Matthew Cook and Douglas Farthing have established our society.

On February 14 and 15 of this year, myself and Richard Johnson, traveled to the McGuire VA Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. For those two days we sketched and got to know three Marines. Our art and writings were featured in Canada's National Post, The New York Times and the United Kingdom's Guardian Newspaper. Please take some time to click on these links and read the articles and the comments left.

When my series of three pieces appeared in the NYTs, I was out in San Francisco with my University of Hartford MFA in Illustration program. Virtually all my fellow grad students are working illustrators and college educators. They, along with several of the guest presenters, expressed an interest in expanding on the wounded warrior reportage art that Richard and I had done. And so, The Joe Bonham Project began in earnest.

I met yesterday with key individuals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and the Department of Defense's Vietnam War Commemoration program. Both expressed keen interest and support for the Joe Bonham Project. The NMAH's military and diplomatic collection has agreed in principle to submit our project's artwork for accessioning into a collection of record. The VWC program would like Then and Now portraits of Vietnam veterans undergoing care at VA facilities. We hope that in the not too distant future these images will be featured in traveling exhibits.

Today I spoke with the editor of the Opinionator, and he will accept submissions of images and narrative material for consideration.