CCAD students, veterans debut collaboration in art documentary
When he heard the booms of the Fourth of July fireworks, when the rumbles pulsed through his body, old feelings washed over Stephen Yarger’s mind and suddenly there he was – back on the sands and among the mountains of Afghanistan in the middle of fighting a war.
And that made him angry. So he eventually put pen to paper in a poem called “A Reason to Fight” to try and better understand how much there was that he still needed to process from the 15 years he had spent in the U.S. Army.
The fireworks reminded me of what I had left behind, reminded me of what I’ve lost. My purpose. My direction. My life. Me. Boom! The smell, the concussion, the flash, reminded me of what I almost was. I am not supposed to be afraid of this anymore.
And now, his writings and story are among several featured in the documentary “Re-story: Transforming Veteran Stories into Art,” premiering online at 5 p.m. Friday. A panel discussion will follow at 6 p.m., moderated by retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Ferriter, president and CEO of the National Veterans Memorial and Museum.
To register for the free events, visit veteransfilm.org/presents. The film will remain available online there through Sunday.
The project is the product of a fourmonth collaboration between the Veteran Arts Initiative, the VA Central Ohio Healthcare System and the Columbus College of Art & Design that started as part of a National Veterans Film Festival originally planned for this year.
The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the festival – of which Gateway Film Center and the National Veterans Memorial and Museum also are a part – until September 2021. But the locally-produced documentary that sought to connect veterans and civilians across generations went on.
Earlier this year, CCAD students interviewed 21 veterans about their lives, their military experiences and their art. They then used those podcasts, videos, and animations to create the 45-minute film.
Yarger, a 37-year-old business owner from Reynoldsburg, discovered the local VA’S Veteran Arts Initiative after he left the Army in 2015. He now mentors other veterans to help them find new ways to express themselves.
“When you are in the military you are taught purpose, motivation and direction, and those are the three major things that define who you are. When you transition out – you lose your purpose. I did,” he said. “For veterans, our stories are all we have. And art is a really great way to tell them. It was so cool to work with these students who had this incredible ability to share stories and could kind of immortalize it all.”
Social worker Heather Seymour founded the arts initiative and co-produced this documentary. She first worked with 28 CCAD students at a workshop about empathetic listening. Then, the students and veterans – a group that included veterans who have taken up metalsmithing, sculpting, leather crafting, drawing, writing, photography and performance art, just to name a few – paired up for the project.
Every meeting was powerful, and each interview produced “rich morsels of beauty about who we are,” Seymour said.
The idea of bringing civilians and veterans and young and old together to share and learn the power of telling one’s own story – or the weighty importance of learning and sharing someone’s else’s – was at the project’s core.
“I hope the veterans felt a sense of community and mission and aspiration and purpose,” Seymour said. “The project kind of stripped away, ‘Are you a veteran or are you a civilian?’ and really just found unity between humans — you know, man’s common search for meaning.”
Aaron Bell, a 21-year-old senior advertising and graphic design major at CCAD, recorded podcasts with two veterans and produced another. He was excited about the opportunity but didn’t anticipate how much the experience would change him.
One of the men he interviewed was a Vietnam War combat veteran who still works every day to overcome the posttraumatic stress stemming from his service. Bell had learned about Vietnam only from movies and history books and soon realized he didn’t really understand much about war at all.
“This was a transformative experience for me,” Bell said. “It showed me that art and the human creative mind are so powerful. Art is almost as powerful as medicine. It is almost as powerful as prayer. It is a force.”
And that’s exactly what the folks at CCAD and the VA wanted to happen, said Nicole Monahan, an artist and educator who has taught workshops for veterans.
“This project gave students access to a perspective that is really different from theirs,” said Monahan, who also is the college’s director of corporate and community partnerships and co-produced the film. “It helped to put students in someone else’s shoes and learn to tell their story.”
For the documentary, Yarger shares some of his thoughts about the power of art, and then a portion of his poem was animated for a segment. He shares his experiences, he said, because it helps others.
When he settled in the Columbus area after leaving the Army, “there were dark places I was at. It was bad.”
But after connecting to local VA services and working with Seymour’s arts initiative, he found some peace. Now, helping other veterans find their own creative outlets and seeing how much participating in the documentary has meant to everyone has only convinced him of the power of telling one’s story even more.
“The whole idea behind the veterans’ creative arts program is saving lives and suicide prevention. In behavioral health it is always ‘I am OK’ or ‘I am not OK,’ and there is nothing in between. So how do we stop people from getting to that ‘I’m not OK point.’ Sharing our stories can help that.”
As another portion of his own poem attests:
Where do I go to find myself? How do I remember the strength to bridge the gap between who I was and who I am supposed to be? Where do scars belong in my life? Alone at a desk I remembered the reason. hzachariah@dispatch.com @hollyzachariah