A YEAR IN THE TROPICS: An Introduction to the Exhibition

George C. Clark was born in Chicago and earned a BFA degree at the School of the Art Institute there.  He was drafted in 1968 and sent to Field Artillery School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  He watched the 1968 election results in the U.S.O. Lounge at San Francisco International Airport en route to Vietnam.  Clark was assigned to Bravo Battery of the 6^th Battalion, 27^th Artillery, a Second Field Force heavy artillery unit dug in at Song Be Airstrip near the town of Phuoc Binh, the capital of Phuoc Long Province in the highlands along the Cambodian border north of Saigon.

“Bravo Battery’s compound was rectangular,” says Clark, “about the size of two football fields, surrounded by an earthwork with guard bunkers and lots of barbed wire.  Our mess hall was the only above-ground structure.  All our working and sleeping quarters were in underground bunkers because we were frequently shelled by mortars and rockets.  There were 130 men at Bravo Battery, two 175mm cannons, two 8-inch howitzers, and four truck-mounted Quad-50 anti-aircraft guns for perimeter defense.”

Clark served 13 months with Bravo Battery, working in the fire direction center, and was made section chief with a rank of Spec/5 before his discharge in December, 1969.  Like a lot of veterans, Clark was glad to put his military experiences far behind him on his return to civilian life.  Then, in 1985, he was invited to take part in an exhibition of art by Vietnam veterans at Skokie Public Library.  He did one Vietnam painting, then another, and wound up showing four paintings at the Library.  “Once I started,” says Clark, “it was as though a floodgate of memories and impressions had opened, and I knew I had to continue the series.  Vietnam was a surreal world: I experienced horror and good times, boredom and anxiety, saw acts of savagery and selfless gallantry.  I hope through my art to communicate some of this to the people who weren’t there, and maybe strike a responsive chord in those who were.”

After his discharge from the Army, Clark worked in graphic design before his first one-person gallery show in 1978.  Since then his landscapes, figure paintings and graphics have been exhibited at many Midwestern museums and galleries and have been awarded prizes by the Art Institute of Chicago, Evanston Art Center, the Artists Guild of Chicago, the Municipal Art League, Rockford College, Beverly Art Center, the Lexington (Kentucky) Art League, and the Rockford Art Museum.

Work by Clark is represented in the collections of the United States Air Force, the National Veterans Art Museum, the Illinois State Museums, the John H. Vanderpoel Art Museum, the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, the Sheraton Station Square Hotel in Pittsburgh, KPMG Corporate Headquarters in Chicago, the Quaker Oats Company in Chicago, McDonald’s Corporation in Oak Brook, Illinois, Sandoz/Novartis AG of Switzerland, Chicago State University Business School Hall of Fame and many other corporate, institutional and private collections located mostly in the Midwest but also in California, Texas, New York, Israel, Japan and England.  You can see some of Clark’s paintings and graphics online at his website www.georgecclark.com, his travel art blog travelerssketchbook.blogspot.com, or by image-googling the name George C. Clark.