VETERANS

backgrounds in working with veterans: Seymour, through her job, and Davis through a previous job with a nonprofit that helped veterans in the Washington, D.C., area.

Seymour has seen the power that art can have in persuading veterans to talk.

“I was amazed at how much more I got out of veterans, how much more information and how much deeper they went, when they had a picture in their hands,” she said. “Rather than talk about themselves directly, they would talk about the picture.

“There was magic in it. What the magic is, is people being able to be vulnerable.”

She also saw the effect art had on her mother, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in the 1990s but visited an art school each year.

“Daily life occurrences were a real struggle for her. She said it herself, ‘(The school is) the only place where I don’t have a traumatic brain injury,’ ” Seymour said. “It really sustained her. And she could be confident and free and the woman she was for much of my childhood.”

Fredricks, a resident of Athens County, made his movie with producer Brian Plow, an associate professor in the School of Media Arts & Studies at Ohio University. Fredricks said that the way civilians approach veterans can make a major difference in the response they receive.

“It breaks down to ‘in the tribe or out of the tribe,’ ” Fredricks said. “If I go into a group of veterans and I start to tell where I was at and ask where they were at, there’s an understanding of what we can talk about and not talk about.

“I’d never go up to a veteran and ask. ‘Did you

ever shoot anybody in combat?’ but the innocently naïve might ask that, and they don’t understand the Pandora’s box they might be opening.”

Fredricks recommends using “sincerity and honesty. Go up to a vet and say, ‘I don’t know what you did in the military, but I’m interested in what you did.’ ”

The organizers hope that the event helps close the gap between civilians and veterans.

“I want a packed house,” Seymour said. “I want people to show up. If people show up, we are going to be able to create a place where civilians and veterans can walk away and say, ‘Wow, I never thought about it in that way.’ ” Davis was more direct. “If we give people a place to tell their story, I think that’s a win.”