And now - Nevada's Hidden Stories - an occasional series that sheds light on the unique people, places, and communities which make Nevada the place we call home. It’s produced by Rachel Hopkin and Nevada Humanities.
In this week’s feature, in honor of Veterans Day, Rachel learns about an unusual art project based in Reno
Tina:
When we fold a crane, we start usually with a square piece of paper. Combat paper comes in various thicknesses, some as thick as card stock. My experience is the thinner the paper the better the crane.
This is Tina Drakulich.
Tina
It’s kind of crispy. You can hear the difference between that paper and this paper.
Tina is showing me how to fold an origami crane. Her plan is to amass a 1000 of them; so far she’s got about 250. What makes the cranes notable is that the paper Tina is using comes from a military uniform, thanks to a project called Combat Paper Nevada.
Tina:
When I’m teaching, I have developed a visual language, so I call it taco taco sundial.
Combat Paper Nevada is one of a range of creative activities Tina organizes in her role as Director of the David J Drakulich Art Foundation for Freedom of Expression. The foundation was inspired by her son.
Tina:
David was an artist who just needed to paint and get his hands dirty with colourful things ever since he was a little boy and when he became a teenager he actually began to develop a body of work, very expressive, emotional work. Um, when he was 16, he witnessed 9/11 on the television, and I didn’t really notice that day but he just changed his mind about things.
Tina said that from then on, David stopped painting. Then when he was 18, an army recruiter visited his school.
Tina
He completely signed up all the papers without even telling us and came home and said “this is what I’ve done”. It was shocking to us and traumatizing then. I remember saying to him “but you’re an artist, what are you doing? Why don’t you go to art school?” And he said “because I need to live before I do art school.”
David was with the army for four years. Then early in 2008, Tina and her husband Joseph received the news that he’d been killed in an explosion whilst serving in Afghanistan.
Tina:
When you lose a child, an offspring, it’s a real challenge to your mental health [laugh] and we had to really focus on what is it going to take to get through however many days we have left in our life, because apparently we’re going to keep on living [laugh] but I would say David was killed in January of 2008. By 2009, I was designing art classes for, specifically for veterans.
That was the start of it. Inspired by David’s artistic talent and with a driving need to find a constructive outlet for their grief, Tina and her family, channeled their energy into starting the David J Drakulich Art Foundation. Its mission is to provide therapeutic art education and experiences to veterans and others affected by war. One of the workshops it offers is Combat Paper Nevada.
Tina:
Right here is our Hollander Beater which is um, Hollander beaters are something that were invented centuries ago to make paper.
You can see that this wheel in here is making the water run.
This Hollander Beater is central to the Combat Paper project, it’s what turns cloth into paper pulp.
You can see a couple of tags that shouldn’t really be in the paper but they can go.
Combat Paper now has global reach but it began in 2006 – the brainchild of army veteran Drew Cameron and paper maker Drew Matott. Together they came up with the idea that transforming military uniforms into paper might offer a healing experience for veterans and others affected by military activities. Drew Cameron is the Director of Combat Paper. He and Tina met in 2010.
Tina:
When I met Drew, I knew that I wanted to make paper out of David’s uniform and the experience for me was very transformational. Instantly I was able to start saying things I hadn’t been aware, for example of how greatly angry I was. I wasn’t aware how mad I was at that time. I was thinking “oh, la la la, life is beautiful and I can go on serving veterans, the arts …” and cutting up that uniform was frightening, but it was empowering at the same time. Since then I want to make paper with others and include other veterans and other gold star families in the project.
So the David J Drakulich Art Foundation - working initially with the Nevada Alliance for Arts Education - began to offer Combat Paper workshops in Nevada.
Luana:
At first I was really appalled.
Luana Ritch is describing her initial reaction to the idea of turning her uniform into paper.
Luana:
Because the uniform represents that service, not just your service but, in the case of the army since 1775, so the idea of cutting it up was really difficult for me.
Luana Ritch served in the army in South Korea during the cold war era, where she faced extended periods of high stress, outbreaks of violence, and the deaths of colleagues. Back in the US, she dealt with those experiences as best she could alone but then a period of crisis forced her to turn to the VA hospital where she was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. As part of her ensuing treatment, she took a creative writing workshop for veterans which is where she met Tina Drakulich. Tina told her about Combat Paper and suggested Luana might bring a jacket she’d worn in Korea.
Luana:
It took her about a year to convince me to cut up this field jacket. I had started writing poetry again and so I thought oh, well, you know, having the paper made from my field jacket to write my poetry on might be really cool and so that’s kind of what put me over, and it became a lot easier once I made that first cut, and then as I put my fibre into the water, it was like I was releasing all of those emotions and all those tensions and all those experiences. I’m a poet so I start you know drawing these metaphors of a redemptive event of going down into the water and then coming up something new.
Luana has now taken several Combat paper workshops.
Luana:
The project that I’ve done this year is using the paper in a way that is traditionally used where cloth is used and so I’ve been making a quilt.
Rachel:
Omigoodness, can I see it?
Luana:
Sure, I’ve got a couple of the blocks here from my quilt, today. One of the appliques is from a very traditional and familiar to quilter’s pattern of the Sunbonnet Sue. In my story this is Combat Boot Sue.
You can see the distinctively shod Combat Boot Sue and other pieces discussed in this report online at the KUNR dot org.
Luana:
She is representative of the fact that military service goes back till the revolutionary war in my family and so I wanted to represent that that even in childhood I had that tie and so I did that with Combat Boot Sue.
Greg:
There’s me getting rescued after a helicopter crash.
Greg Jayne is showing me a photograph in a book of the first air cavalry division, Vietnam.
Greg:
I didn’t know I was in that book until I started connecting with people and they said “you’re in the book” and I said “what?”
Greg doesn’t remember the crash, or many other things that took place during his 18 months in Vietnam. When he returned home in 1969, he had a cluster of classic post-combat symptoms - He didn’t like to be around people, he sought solace in alcohol, he was afraid of loud noises– however he was only officially diagnosed with PTSD a few years ago. It was his wife, Lisa –an artist herself - who more or less coerced Greg into taking part in Combat Paper Nevada.
Lisa:
What was that trade off? I had to do something, we went something, and then it was his turn to do something that I wanted to do I will take every opportunity to expose him to more art and healing and all that. He’d rather be doing something like kayaking or hiking.
So Greg did take part in the workshop. His Vietnam gear had long since gone, so instead he took a Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps uniform belonging to his son which symbolically represented his own service.
Greg
You gotta have a sharp pair of scissors. You cut the seams out and you cut the zipper and everything out and then you cut small strips of what, an inch wide. They have a machine that grinds it.
That’s the Hollander beater we heard earlier
Greg
And it grinds it into a pulp, then you put it on plate, no what would you call that?
Lisa:
A screen.
Greg:
Screen, and then they stack up a stack and then they actually drive a car up onto the stack to press the prints.
Rachel:
So you’ve got this stack of paper, tell me what you did with yours?
Greg:
My wife printed my discharge on the paper and then I took it out into the desert and I shot it full of holes and then I took red paint and put it on my hand and put it on the discharge.
Rachel:
Why did you take it into the desert? When did that occur to you?
Greg:
Well, it was kind of Lisa’s idea [giggle].
Lisa:
I just thought it would blend a manly activity with the opportunity to shoot your discharge papers and I thought it may be cathartic.
Rachel:
Was it?
Greg:
Yes, it was. And it, to me it made a statement, it makes a statement. I mean it’s an honourable thing but then you’ve got blood on your hands so it’s different, it’s a weird thing.
Rachel:
So overall, how did you feel about having participated in Combat Paper Nevada? Was it a valuable experience for you?
Greg:
Oh yes, it was absolutely a valuable experience, yes.
Rachel:
And would you encourage other veterans to take part?
Greg:
I would, especially the younger ones.
Rachel:
Why?
Greg:
Because they would have their uniform and it’s fresh in their mind.
Noel:
Rachel, I really kind of debated doing this. You asked me to show you, you know, what I’ve done with some of the paper. The thing that I’ve done with it is I wrote a letter to David and his family on paper that I made from David’s uniform and mine and that’s what I used the paper for.
Noel Lipana is a Lt Colonel in the California International Guard based in Sacramento from where he spoke with me by phone.
Noel:
To Sergeant David J Drakulich. I can’t tell you how many times this letter has stopped in my head after those first words, and all the ways I’ve driven back these emotions so that I wouldn’t break down, but it’s time now to fill in that haunted space that’s been with me since we served together. We shared combat, and all its harshness, and the bonds that it breeds.
Those bonds were severed on January 9th 2008, the day David was killed. When Noel returned to US after David’s death, he reached out to Tina and Joseph Drakulich, then joined the board of the David J Drakulich art foundation, and through that learned about Combat Paper Nevada.
Noel:
I was immediately drawn to it. I’m not an artist at all but I saw it as an opportunity for, er, just kind of creating a space. It was a little strange to start deconstructing a uniform that you wore and it’s very personal and intimate when you’re deconstructing your battle buddy’s uniform but it’s about this transition that your heart and mind start to make. That’s that intangible that Tina and the foundation have really captured. We do an exceptionally good job of making soldiers, airmen, combatants, warriors, what not; recovering combats veterans is a different story. You know, I love the military, I love my profession, don’t get me wrong at all but] to have this art experience has been huge for me and it’s opened up, you know, different levels of growth out of that trauma.
Making the paper his own uniform and David’s enabled Noel to put down in writing thoughts that had troubled him for years.
Noel:
David I am so sorry. I cannot express the sense of loss that has accompanied your death. I believe it has been so immense because the love I held and hold for you is equally immense. Please forgive me for not being able to prevent the attack. Since I could not do one last thing for you in your death and memorial, I dedicate the best of my future to your spirit. Maria and I will give our first born son your name sake. To Tina and Joseph, I am so sorry. Please forgive me for not returning your David home alive. I think you know that I truly knew David’s soul beyond his role as a soldier and loved and appreciated him for it. One of the best things I’ve ever been told is when you, Tina, told me that I hugged you like David. Lord guard and guide you. Noel.
The original copy of Noel’s letter, on the combat paper, is now with Tina and Joseph Drakulich. They all agreed to share part of it here as a means of helping others understand the costs of war. And that’s the purpose at the heart of all the activities put on by the David J Drakulich foundation. And that is also why Tina is set on making 1000 combat paper cranes. This one is nearly complete.
Tina:
As I’m doing this I’ll be thinking of things that I would like to have happen in the world. I remember the years that I grew up with no war in the country, I’d like to go back to that time. And I think about things about the person who wore this uniform and I want to be grateful to that person for securing my security and freedom. And the ability to say what I feel like saying in this country is a blessing that I believe David went to war for, and so that’s why we called it the Foundation for Freedom of expression. So, um, however many we had, we have one more. It’ll be a while before we get 1000.
If you’d like to learn more about the David J Drakulich Art Foundation for Freedom of Expression, find out about the next Combat Paper Nevada workshop, or see photographs of any of the pieces discussed in this report then please visit the KUNR website - that’s KUNR dot org. For Nevada Humanities and KUNR, I’m Rachel Hopkin.
David J Drakulich art foundation for Freedom of Expression: http://www.davidsartmemorial.org/and https://www.facebook.com/DJD.Art.Foundation
Kaitlin Baird is undertaking fund-raising and awareness efforts for the foundation on Twitter through the foundation's handle: @DJDrakulichart and her own handle: 13in13djdaf. Kaitlin also blogs about her efforts for DJDAF at 13in13weebly.com.
This report on Combat Paper Nevada was part of Nevada's Hidden Stories, an occasional series that brings to light the unique people, places, and communities that make Nevada the place we call home. Nevada's Hidden Stories is produced by Nevada Humanities with generous support by the National Endowment for the Humanities.