A YEAR IN THE TROPICS POSTER ART AT DANON GALLERY IN EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

A Year in the Tropics Poster Art, 13.5 x 9 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark

The first exhibitions of my Vietnam War art were at the Evanston Art Center Co-op Gallery and the State of Illinois Building in downtown Chicago (since renamed the Thompson Center).  For both venues I had to produce my own announcement cards and posters.  Because color printing was prohibitively expensive in those days, I created this poster art for black-and-white reproduction.  I wanted it really dramatic, suggesting war in Asia, combat, and showing Air Force planes in action (which would make the image suitable for inclusion in the United States Air Force Art Collection), rather than illustrating a particular incident from my own Vietnam experience.  I did see Phantoms rocketing VC targets, but not from as close up as this drawing suggests, and I was in combat, but at an isolated fire support base near the Cambodian border rather than among any of the ancient Khmer ruins in the area.

I had made this drawing on illustration board that isn't ideal for watercolor, so I made a same-size silkscreen print of of it on heavy archival watercolor board and hand-colored that version with watercolor and gouache.  That color painting, titled Phantoms in Close Support, is the one that was in my A Year in the Tropics exhibitions and is now in the U.S. Air Force Art Collection.  You can see it posted elsewhere on this blog.

So I still have this original ink drawing, and it can currently be seen at Danon Gallery, 1810 Central Street in Evanston, Illinois, where I am having an exhibition with Mark McMahon and John Downs, two other artists who also have work in the U.S.A.F. Art Collection.  We are all showing landscapes on the gallery walls, but Bob Danon asked me to bring in a few of my pieces from A Year in the Tropics unframed, and they are displayed on a table at the back of the gallery's front room.  The show will be up until about November 10, 2016.  Call (847) 899-7758 for gallery hours.   

       

A NOTE OF APOLOGY

When I originally posted this blog I was able to make the pictures any size on the menu and the texts under them stayed the "normal" size I had selected for texts.  I just now reviewed the blog and was alarmed to discover that under the horizontal images I had posted "extra large"  the texts had also gotten extra wide and the last few words on each line of text had disappeared.  I fixed this by reducing the "extra large" horizontal pictures to "large" and now all the texts are legible again.  I apologize to anyone who visited this blog in recent months and found parts of it unreadable.  Sorry about that.

GEORGE C. CLARK GALLERY TALK AT NATIONAL VETERANS ART MUSEUM MAY 25, 2013

I was very honored to be one of the exhibiting artists invited to give a talk about my Vietnam War art at the opening reception of the "Tenacity and Truth" exhibition at the National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago today.  My thanks to the Museum's curators and staff, and to all the people who came out to the opening.

A YEAR IN THE TROPICS drawing included in new exhibition at NATIONAL VETERANS ART MUSEUM

Bad Dog, one of the drawings by George C. Clark from his Vietnam War art series "A Year in the Tropics," is included in TENACITY AND TRUTH: PEOPLE, PLACES AND MEMORIES, a new exhibition featuring art from the Museum's permanent collection at the National Veterans Art Museum, 4041 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60641.  There will be a free and open to the public opening reception for the exhibition on Saturday, May 25, 2013 from 1 to 5pm.  George C. Clark will be giving a brief gallery talk about his art and his experiences in Vietnam that afternoon at 1:30pm.  The exhibition will be on display at the Museum for about a year.

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 in Bloomington, Indiana, 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. 

AN ARTIST IN VIETNAM

Spec/5 George C. Clark in autumn 1969    Photograph

BY THE TIME I WAS DRAFTED I HAD ALREADY PUT IN A COUPLE OF YEARS AS AN ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR IN A CHICAGO AD AGENCY, AND HAND LETTERING WAS ONE OF THE THINGS I WAS GOOD AT.  AT THE TIME THIS 8 X 8 FOOT SIGN WAS THE LARGEST PAINTING I HAD EVER MADE.

INCIDENTALLY, NO ONE EVER CALLED BRAVO BATTERY "CAMP MARTIN."  I HAD BEEN STATIONED THERE OVER NINE MONTHS AND HAD NEVER HEARD THAT NAME UNTIL THE BATTERY COMMANDER ASKED ME TO PAINT IT ON THIS SIGN.

Comment:

At the left of this photo is our mess hall, the only above-ground structure in our compound.  The structures you see beyond it are blast walls, tin roofs and the several feet of layered sandbags that topped the bunkers we worked and slept in.  The actual bunkers were mostly underground.  

PHANTOMS IN CLOSE SUPPORT

Phantoms in Close Support, unique 13.5 x 9 inch silkscreen print from an ink drawing hand colored with watercolor and gouache by George C. Clark    U.S. Air Force Art Collection

Comment:

I did the black-and-white ink drawing for this piece to use as poster and announcement art for the first two showings of A Year in the Tropics because color printing was too expensive in 1987.  Then I made a silkscreen print of it on archival watercolor board and hand colored it with watercolor and gouache.  The color version is now in the U.S. Air Force Art Collection.  

I have exercised a bit of artistic license in this painting.  I did see our aircraft rocketing targets, but not from as close up as it looks here.  And there were Khmer ruins about (I was only a 175mm projectile's throw from Cambodia, after all), but I never saw any of them personally.  I have since done archaeology in southern Illinois and Yorkshire, but I didn't have a chance to check out any ruins in Vietnam.  I spent over 95% of the thirteen months I was there literally underground in bunkers.