An exhibit on display at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center through February shares the faces and stories of Black Arkansas veterans.
More than 23,000 Black veterans live in Arkansas, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Some of those vets are the focus of “We Hold These Truths: American Veterans of Arkansas,” a photographic exhibit on display at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in Little Rock.
“The exhibit is important to the MTCC because it highlights the rarely told stories of Arkansas veterans, many of whom served abroad while being denied the basic rights at home,” director Christina Shutt says in a post on the center’s website.
Ed Drew, a Little Rock photographer and veteran, has been working on the project for more than a year. The MTCC-commissioned exhibition includes about 30 tintype photos of African American veterans. The photographic process, which is called wet-plate collodion, was developed before the Civil War.
“Ed’s work blends history, culture and artistic portraiture to produce images that evoke the past while also bearing witness to the present,” Shutt says.
“Ed’s work blends history, culture and artistic portraiture to produce images that evoke the past while also bearing witness to the present,” Shutt says.
African Americans have served in every American war since the Revolutionary War, but little has been done to collect the stories and spotlight the service of Black veterans. That’s what makes this exhibition important, Drew says.
“It’s the history of this country and for me, most importantly, it’s the history of African American veterans who are rarely spoken about,” Drew says.
Drew grew up in Brooklyn and joined the military after high school. He spent six years in the active duty Air Force. During his tour of duty, he was assigned to an airbase near Tokyo and it was while he was in Japan that Drew discovered his “passion for art and the distinctive aesthetic derived from the Japanese culture,” according to his website.
In 2009, Drew joined the California Air National Guard as a Combat Search and Rescue helicopter gunner. He created his first major body of work while deployed to Afghanistan in the spring of 2013. While in the Air National Guard, he attended San Francisco Art Institute where he received a BFA in sculpture and a minor in photography.
On Veterans Day, Drew will participate in a virtual celebration hosted by the MTCC in the morning and he’ll discuss his artwork as a guest of Art on Arkansas in the afternoon. Art on Arkansas is a biweekly, Facebook livestream hosted by the Arkansas Arts Council that highlights artists and arts programs in the state. The livestream begins at 1 p.m. Nov. 11.
“We Hold These Truths: American Veterans of Arkansas” is on view at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center through February. More information is available at MosaicTemplarsCenter.com.