pratt people
I created The Whole Shebang during the emotionally charged week of Holy Thursday and Passover at the beginning of the war in Iraq. I had been making a small daily drawing for about six months while recuperating from a foot operation. I was still reeling from 9/11. I was drawing from the radio, getting out my frustration and anger after hearing what was happening in the world. This drawing ended up being the “punch line” of the series of drawings that week. It was drawn with a fine line marker on a blank postcard and mailed to a friend. That is why it has the orange lines at the bottom postal markings. —Paula Costanzo, B.F.A. Painting ’82
In 1967, during the Vietnam War, I was an officer candidate at the Artillery and Missile Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. As part of our training, we had to undergo a three-day escape and evasion exercise. They set it up so that nearly everyone got captured and sent to this simulated POW camp. This image is from my upcoming graphic novel, “GRUNT,” which details this experience. Aside from the incident portrayed here,
This is a detail from my diptych, titled Progress. It is a painting of
officer candidates were tortured with
Dan, a dear friend who thought he should go off and fight in the Vietnam War. Many
repeated electric shocks, confined inside
of us tried to talk him out of it. He saw it as his duty as a man. He was an intelligent,
wall lockers and then buried alive with
sensitive, healthy young man who, when I saw him after basic training, told me in a
hands and feet bound, exposed to large
state of astonishment that the training was to teach him to kill. He went to Vietnam
snakes and decaying animals, totally
and came back hardened, cynical, and druggy. The last I heard, he was in California,
immersed in mud, and forced to crawl
drifting. I still cry thinking of him and his sacrifice. The painting is about my frustra-
for extended periods with large logs tied
tion. I still cry at the loss of Dan. Not physically, but in every other sense, he was killed
on their backs.
by the war. —Ann DuBois, B.F.A. Fine Arts ’59
—Rick Parker, B.F.A. Printmaking ’75
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p r att folio