Beyond Zero 1914-1918, by Drew Cameron (Combat Paper)

The Mariposa County Arts Council is pleased to welcome artist and Iraq veteran, Drew Cameron, to Mariposa for a public art talk and papermaking workshop. The art talk will be held Thursday, February 11, 2016 at the County of Mariposa Health and Human Services building in the Mariposa Room from 7:30 – 9:00 p.m., following a fundraiser dinner at 1850. The papermaking workshop will be held the following day on Friday, February 12, 2016 from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Keith M. Bertken’s VFW Post #6042. Both the talk and the workshop are open to the public and free of charge.

Cameron, whose work is currently featured in the Arts Council’s In Unform: Military Uniforms and the Stories They Tell, uses military uniforms to create handmade paper that becomes the foundation of his artwork. His organization Combat Paper conducts papermaking workshops where veterans use their uniforms to create their own works of art. In a modern iteration of the long tradition of turning swords into ploughshares, during these workshops uniforms are cut up, beaten into a pulp and formed into sheets of paper on which veterans create art that expresses their experiences with the military. Cameron’s artwork can be found in the collections of the Rhode Island School of Design’s Fleet Library (Providence, RI), the Library of Congress (D.C.), the New York Public Library (New York, NY), and the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Research Center Library (Madison, WI). His work has been included in exhibitions at Los Angeles’ Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco’s Museum of Craft and Design, the Capshaw-Spielberg Center for the Performing Arts, New Roads School in San Monica, CA, the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, OR, and the Southern Exposure in San Francisco, CA.

Local restaurant, 1850, is hosting a fundraiser dinner prior to the art talk in support of the Arts Council’s Veterans in the Arts Initiation. Tickets for the fundraiser dinner are $40 and include a three-course dinner (personal appetizer, entrée and dessert) and 50% of the proceeds will be given back to the Mariposa Arts Council to support arts programming focused on veterans. In addition to the price fix special menu, 1850 will donate a percentage of all the night’s proceeds to the Arts Council.

Tickets may be purchased online, or in person at the Arts Council (5009 Highway 140, Mariposa) or 1850 (5114 Highway 140, Mariposa)

Details:

Art Talk by Drew Cameron at the County of Mariposa Health and Human Services Building, 7:30 to 9:00 (5362 Lemee Lane, Mariposa).

Combat Papermaking Workshop with Drew Cameron at the Keith M. Bertken’s VFW Post #6042 (North end of Mariposa at the intersection of Highway 140 and Highway 49, downstairs behind the Mariposa Visitor Center) from 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (participants may come and go as they need).

For more information about the fundraiser, art talk, papermaking workshop, or In Uniform exhibition please visit: MariposaArtsCouncil.org or call the Arts Council at (209) 966-3155.

In Uniform and its complementary public programming is jointly organized by the Mariposa County Arts Council and Mariposa’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Post #6042 and is funded by the California Arts Council’s Veterans in the Arts (VIA) Pilot Grant Program, which addresses equity, access, and opportunity by providing project and partnership support for State-Local Partners (SLPs) to reach veterans, active military, and their families. VIA serves to enrich the lives of veterans through arts programming that is sensitive and responsive to their unique experiences.

The Arts Council, is an incorporated not-for-profit organization, created to promote and support all forms of the cultural arts, for all ages, throughout Mariposa County and is supported in part by the County of Mariposa, the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and the California Arts Council, a state agency.