Publication Date: Friday, January 14, 2005
Make art, not war
Make art, not war
(January 14, 2005) Raging Grannies, local artist join forces for peace
by Sue Dremann
In the concrete courtyard, a 4-foot long bird stood partially finished, its wings spread wide. Constructed of plastic milk jugs, bubble wrap and chicken wire, the oversized "Burdened Dove of Peace" leaned forward into the cool winter breeze, as if taking off in flight.
But its outstretched wings were weighted down by dozens of war toys -- soldiers, guns, helicopters, mobile radar -- the instruments of destruction. Thus burdened, it cannot fly, artist Gertrude Reagan said.
Reagan is turning swords into plowshares. The Palo Alto artist has created her sculpture for the Peninsula Raging Grannies, the 80-year-old local peace group commonly known for their flowery hats and comic political ditties. The women normally employ street theater to get their point across. But in this time of war they are using art to convey their distaste for the conflict abroad.
Spearheading that effort is Reagan, who has been a member of the Grannies for two years. A diminutive woman with hazel eyes and a long, silver ponytail hanging down her left shoulder, Reagan will be present this Sunday when her sculpture is unveiled at the Palo Alto Unitarian Church Main Hall.
The Raging Grannies will perform a free concert and sing-along of newly penned songs. The group also plans to take the peace sculpture on the road with them as they protest outside toy stores and other venues in the Bay Area.
Surveying the bird sculpture in her courtyard patio, Reagan, 68, mused on the effects of war on society: "One thing I thought with the little men in the war is a weight on society -- the military spending and the endless conflict -- conflicts we get in that we think will only last a couple of weeks."
But the reality is that no matter how remote a war on foreign soils may seem, its effects run deep in our own society, said Reagan.
"War has a ripple effect on our own society. I remember that after Vietnam, there was a rise in crime. You had to hold onto your bicycle and take it into a store to keep it from being stolen. It happens in every war. My mother tells about it after World War I. Boys came back from war and had a whole different take on sex."
The peace-art project began last fall, when the Grannies began scouring local Goodwill's and other places where people donate used toys. They bought up collections of G.I. Joes and plastic tanks, alien invaders and advanced weaponry, to keep them from being recycled into the hands of children, local spokeswoman Ruth Robertson said.
"People listen to their grandmothers," Robertson said, adding that the Grannies are hoping to awaken the consciousness of parents regarding the impact of the toy choices they make.
Reagan glided over to a table-top sculpture she created when the war toys first arrived just after Thanksgiving. Among those most affected and least able to do anything about war have been women, she pointed out. Consequently, her first sculpture addressed the issue of home invasion and destruction. The sculpture has a tentative title: "Video Game Culture Comes to the Birthplace of Civilization."
A half-dozen of the larger dolls -- G.I. Joes, bionic men and a Barbie -- are the principal players on the stage of this war-theater tableau. Bionic half-men, half-machine military warriors with AK-47s search an Islamic home that has been largely destroyed, its gray cinderblock walls crumbled.
In a corner, Barbie cringes, covered in a black burka-type shroud, confronted by forces beyond her control. Only her eyes are exposed. Reagan has painted them to look Middle Eastern, with dark arching brows and mascara-tapered eyes.
Domination is the theme of these toys, she said. It's the same theme she sees in video games, now translated into the remoteness of high-tech weaponry.
"We assume they have all this bionic, computerized stuff to get through life and exert power," she added, pointing to the Borg-like half-man, half-machine figures.
Only one action figure has what Reagan regards as a sympathetic face. It is entirely human, devoid of mechanical optical attachments and brain implants.
"I thought about him being like one of the guys who blew the whistle on Abu Ghraib," she said.
Reagan's roots in social causes run deep. Attending a Quaker high school in Pennsylvania, she got her first taste of injustice while volunteering at weekend work camps in the inner city.
As a 15-year-old, Reagan went into a Philadelphia settlement house and slept there. (Settlement houses were started by Jane Addams in 1889 to help settle new immigrants. In the early 1950s, they were converted into housing for the urban poor.)
"The conditions were unbelievable. Once nice houses were carved up. Without exception, the walls were coal black -- the walls were shiny black," she said.
The experience ignited Reagan's sense of outrage: "Boy, when the civil rights movement rolled around, I was ready."
Since that time in 1951, one branch on Reagan's multidimensional artistic tree has been dedicated to painting the political and social realities of the poor and displaced. Sales from those paintings have raised thousands of dollars for education and disaster relief.
Primarily a painter who professionally goes by the name Myrrh, Reagan has exhibited widely in the United States, including the Smithsonian Institution, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Stanford University and the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto. Her most recent work, a series called "Essential Mysteries," is at once organic and esoteric. Bright colors painted on Plexiglas glow like stained glass, recalling her earlier batiks.
But she has added strong elements of the cosmos and nature, drawn by the patterns and mathematics inherent in physics and cellular biology (her husband, Daryl, is a retired SLAC physicist).
In her work, one finds the artist preoccupied with the spiral, or the patterns of nerve synapses; or by the rock formations and crystals she was exposed to by her geologist father. She is concerned with the minutiae of life forms -- the ylem -- or cosmic stuff that became matter after the big bang.
She even started an artists' nonprofit group in 1981 called YLEM (pronounced EYE-lem) -- Artists Using Science and Technology, to bring together digital artists and those who use scientific technology in their work.
That connection to the web of life, whether on the molecular level or through the social fabric, is intertwined in the various forms of her art, including the peace sculptures. And it flames Reagan's passions for peaceful solutions to human conflicts.
"It seems to take so much more nourishment to maintain the good impulses. But when you do, the results are so much more profound. You have happiness, productivity and community."
E-mail Staff Writer Sue Dremann at sdremann@paweekly.com.
Who: The Peninsula Raging Grannies will perform a free concert and lead a sing-along of newly penned songs. Gertrude Reagan's "Burdened Dove of Peace" will also be unveiled.
Where: Palo Alto Unitarian Church Main Hall, 505 E. Charleston Road in Palo Alto.
When: Sunday from 5:30 to 6 p.m.
Cost: Admission is free.
Info: Visit www.peninsularaginggrannies.org.
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