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Wearable Art by Shirley Cunningham
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"In Flanders Field the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row," the words of this verse from the poem "Flanders Field", first poem I remember from Sanger Ave grade school, rang in my ears as the reds and olives and blacks came together for this painting.
My memories of war begins with an oval-framed portrait of my father in his World War I uniform. It hung throughout my childhood in our upstairs hallway and I studied it often, imagining what it meant to be a soldier. I tried to connect the image of this handsome 20 year old with the balding, heavier man with glasses that was my "Daddy". The 1930's silk velvet I included in this painting is just the shade of his uniform. Another vintage piece I chose for FLANDERS was a 1920's blouse. Its embellishment, a velvet ribbon poppy with an embroidered motif in bronze thread, reminded me again of my daddy and the red crepe paper lapel poppies he would buy each Armistice Day from the veterans standing on the corners in downtown Waco.
There were the red 10 cent stamps purchased each Friday at school, licked and placed in my Victory Savings book to be exchanged when all the pages were filled for a War Bond; black and white news reels shown with each Saturday afternoon movie, ration stamps for new shoes, underwear, sugar and shortening. The making of fudge was strictly prohibited; one recipe required an outlandish three cups of sugar. The lump of white to which was added the packet of yellow coloring, mixed thoroughly and then formed into a rectangle resembling butter. Spy rings for decoding messages, all of these, memories from my World War II childhood. And then it was over.
I celebrated the joy of peace that evening, by rolling, again and again, down the terraced hill of our front lawn in the cool St. Augustine grass with my younger brother. Stars still hung in windows and my older cousins returned from overseas.
Since that day there have been many other wars. Stark televised scenes and newspaper reports of terror in Korea, the drama of the Cuban missile crises, the killings in Vietnam, Bosnia and Iraq. But I remain rather like that little girl looking at that handsome soldier; I am still only standing, looking. I have not been there. FLANDERS is the painting I created as I thought about the pain of so many different battles. If you look closely at its design, you will see silhouetted faces. A caption in the paintings' storybook reads, "There are no victors in war, only nameless faces filled with pain." |
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