“War and Nature: Memorial Water Vines”

Artist: Scottie Kersta-Wilson
Title: War and Nature: Memorial Water Vine
Size: 80” x 20”
Medium: Silk chiffon photograph collage
Description: This silk chiffon photo collage of the Illinois Vietnam Memorial in downtown Chicago came together on a rainy November day as I attended a Veteran’s memorial service at Chicago’s riverfront Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. The memorial is formal, yet the fountains of water that spring from the front of wall of names speaks to a freedom that these men and women fought for. The vines in the photograph represent the jungle through which both sides had to fight. My father was KIA in Vietnam in 1967, and while at the memorial service I met a nurse who may very well have cared for him in the Pleiku field hospital.