Artist finds healing in Lima Company portraits

[Vulture6]

Artist finds healing in Lima Company portraits




By Jon Craig - The Cincinnati Enquirer
Posted : Wednesday May 21, 2008 6:39:26 EDT

COLUMBUS, Ohio — “Let’s go see the boys,” Westerville artist Anita Miller, 47, says as she heads down the unfinished wooden stairs to her studio.

There are “the boys”: Eight life-size oil paintings, images she hopes capture the spirit and personalities of Lima Company Marines killed three years ago on the Iraq war’s deadliest days for Ohio.

It took Miller nearly two years to paint the 6-foot-by-8-foot portraits of the fallen boys-turned-men, six from greater Cincinnati.

The public can experience her artwork when it moves to the Ohio Statehouse this week for an exhibit that opens Saturday.

The idea came to Miller in a dream, a vision she believes is guided by a higher power. Having no ties to the Marines’ families or the military, Miller took a second mortgage to enlarge her studio, a former Army cabin built in 1830.

The art project spawned a healing process that’s just beginning, according to family members, several of whom said they felt the presence of their loved ones within Miller’s studio.

One by one, parents, siblings, wives and friends of the young Marines, who were killed in separate explosions in 2005, have visited Miller’s two-story studio. Relatives from at least seven states plan to pay their respects at the Statehouse on Friday when the Lima Company Memorial, subtitled “A Remembrance of Spirit & Choice,” is dedicated during an invitation-only ceremony.

The exhibit will be on display through Veterans Day, when it will be moved to the Cincinnati Museum Center, then other sites.

The life-size canvases will be arranged in an octagon, as Miller envisioned them in her dream.

Lima Company, the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Reserve unit based at Rickenbacker Air Base, was among the U.S.’s hardest hit during the war. The memorial will include candles and boots recovered after the explosions.

Miller, whose previous work includes landscapes and church paintings, said she read a newspaper article about Lima Company’s fatalities and wished she could do something for the families. A couple of months later, the dream woke her in the night.

“It felt like a download more than anything else,” Miller said.

The artist called Lima Company and Statehouse officials, eventually getting their blessing. She built the studio addition with her own loans in 2006 as she gathered photographs from surviving families. Miller’s expenses total an estimated $100,000, which includes supplies, lost teaching and commission income over 30 months and overhead such as heating the studio in the winter.

A nonprofit organization was founded in January 2007 to defray some of those costs, raise funds and sell commemorative books to finance a traveling exhibit.

Powerful inspiration
Miller chokes up every time she tells visitors about being divinely inspired once she began to paint in early 2007. As she looked at family photographs of the Marines, she experienced specific traits.

For Sgt. David Kreuter, 26, of Miami Township, “When I picked up his picture and put it next to my heart, I felt a wash of dedication and commitment to service. An absolute unwavering dedication. And it just poured over me like a thousand volts. My body was trembling and my eyes were watering. And I thought, ‘I’m not going to get his whole personality. I’m going to get the essence.’“

“I feel like I’m visiting David,” his mother, Pat Murray, said on a recent visit to Miller’s studio. “It’s a way to connect with him. I feel like I’m surrounded by a bunch of friends. ... It gives me great comfort to come up here now. I know where to find David now.”

For Lance Cpl. Michael Cifuentes, 25, of Oxford, Miller felt “a wash of goodness, of pure goodness that I’ve never felt before.” The former Miami University tuba player is holding an iPod in his portrait.

For Lance Cpl. Christopher Dyer, 19, of Evendale, the word was “joy.”

“They are just so completely awesome,” Dyer’s mother, Kathy, said last week as she visited Miller’s studio. “Today is the first day I’ve seen them since they’ve been completed. ... It makes me so happy. It is comforting and it does bring me happiness more than remind me of the sorrow.

“I think Chris in his painting looks like Lee Marvin from ‘The Dirty Dozen,’” Dyer said. “He’s cocky. He’s masculine. He’s got that little 5 o’clock shadow. He’s sort of got some attitude about him. He’s got that Lee Marvin squint.”

‘Red, red, red’
The background in Miller’s first panel is fiery.

“I kept hearing ‘red, red, red,’” she said. “It was as if my head disengaged.” She couldn’t apply the paint fast enough, first with a 3-inch pallet knife and then latex gloves. She had to be helped upstairs afterward.

“I could feel all of the intensity of the terror, the loss, the chaos of that experience. The whole thing exploded in front of my eyes, in full color. I was using my entire body to paint. It wiped me out for two days,” she said. “I literally felt like I carried a little piece of them in my spirit body. I felt like I was the cocoon and all of a sudden they just flew out.”

“And here they are. Bravo,” said Marla Derga, stepmother of Cpl. Dustin A. Derga, the first Lima Company Marine killed in Iraq, on Mother’s Day 2005.

Bridging ‘the gap of grief’
Lima Company Master Sgt. Stephen Walter, who retired from the Marine Corps in January 2006, notified several families when their sons were killed in Iraq. Walter said Miller’s project will have a lasting healing effect.

“Anita Miller’s artwork, I would argue, has bridged the gap of grief for the families ... of the fallen in a way that the best engineers in America could not,” Walter said. “She has touched their heartstrings by making their loved ones part of their lives again in a way that few others could.”

But most veterans of Lima Company have been unable to visit Miller’s studio because their pain is overwhelming. One family member said those Marines will likely view the Statehouse Memorial alone this summer, when they can view it anonymously.

“It’s the parents’ pain that I experience,” Miller said. “Some days are worse than others. ... Just as powerfully as this thing gripped me, it let me go. There’s healing here.”

[cincymarsdad]

Some other news items:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_fremgMtBg&feature=related
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Dato=20080518&Kategori=VIDEO&Lopenr=805190 02&Ref=AR[/font]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']http://www.local12.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=97832a32-f6f5-47ba-8198-518b22ee2cf2&rss=30[/font]
[FONT='Arial','sans-serif'] [/font]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2008/05/gns_marine_art_052008/[/font]
[FONT='Arial','sans-serif'] [/font]
[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PunPx5OAkFo&feature=related[/font]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']I'm headed up to Columbus Friday for th dedication. I have not yet seen the real paintings.[/font]

[Vulture6]

Thanks John. Travel safe.

[cincymarsdad]

That was pretty neat overall. They the families and Lima Marines in that morning to see the paintings, and then the were covered with linen. That afternoon, the dedication ceremony was held on the lawn with about 1200 people attending. John Glenn spoke, among others, but the highlight was Carole Hoffman, mother of Justin Hoffman, Chris' squad leader. She was amazing. I asked for a transcript of here words, but they wouldn't match the delivery.

The families then went inside to the rotunda for the unveiling and candle lighting which was televised outside to those remaining. The ceremony was also on Armed Forces TV. There was a fly over by 4 F-16s. It was very well done.

On Saturday, "we" had lunch at the Hoffman's house. Being with the other GS Parents is always a healing time for us.

[AngelBear]

Very touching... God Bless them and Anita Miller for her wonderful work.

[cincymarsdad]

This web site shows photos from the dedication of a memorial in the Statehouse rotunda currently - 8 large (8' x 4') paintings of 22 Marines and 1 Navy Corpsman from Lima Company 3/25 killed in Iraq in 2005. Lima Company is based near Rickenbacker Airport south of Columbus. Eleven of these men were lost 3 years ago today when the AAV in which they were riding was destroyed by a large IED.

http://www.mca-marines.org/leatherneck/lima_slideshow.asp

http://www.leatherneckmagazine-digital.com/leatherneckmagazine-share/200808/?pg=40&pm=2&u1=friend

[ClutterbusterNY]

Thanks for sharing these links John.
We know that the pain will never go away, but then neither
will the pride. Today as we remember their sacrifice, we share both of these emotions with you.
God bless Chris and his fellow Marines of Lima Co. 3/25.