Everyone finds healing in a different way. This month, veterans in Chicago have been using art to not only heal from their service during wartime, but to share those experiences with others.
On Friday, June 12, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago will host the CreatiVets Final Exhibition, an exhibit that will showcase the artwork of veterans. The show is a culmination of a three-week course where the participants studied different mediums of art and used these resources to express their experience, the SAIC reported.
The program was cosponsored by CreatiVets, a nonprofit that encourages veterans to use art, music and writing to find healing. After years of struggling with depression, anxiety and stress after returning from Iraq, Marine veteran Richard Casper found that playing guitar and creating with clay were his most effective forms of relief. He founded CreatiVets in the fall of 2013 to try to give other veterans the same therapy that he had found successful.
Veterans may find yoga to be a relaxing activity to take up after service.
In addition to giving the veterans a therapeutic technique for expression and healing, the three-week course also connected them with others who have been through similar experiences, a form of healing in and of itself.
"Everybody's sharing so much information on way of life and struggles that we have in common," Marine veteran Eugene Soto told DNAinfo Chicago. "It's a lot easier to work with other veterans."
Soto is working on a plaster piece about a friend who died after being wounded in Iraq, DNAinfo Chicago reported.
"Just being there with him, and just hearing his last words, that's something that's always been with me," Soto said.
The exhibition will be held from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the SAIC's LeRoy Neiman Center.