Project Heroes honours soldiers killed in Afghanistan
December 3, 2019 - Tim Bryant, Western Sentinel
An exhibit commemorating the 158 Canadian soldiers who died during the Afghan mission recently wrapped up its time in Edmonton.
Project Heroes, an art exhibition featuring paintings of those soldiers killed in Afghanistan, was on display for nearly three weeks in The Bunker at the Edmonton Garrison Memorial Golf and Curling Club in October and November.
However, only 26 of the 80 completed portraits were on display – commemorating the 26 Edmonton-based soldiers who died in Afghanistan.
Matt Gawley, general manager of the golf and curling club, said in the time the exhibit was on display, it was well received both on social media and from those who saw it in person. In addition, he said there were some groups and some individuals who came to the clubhouse to see the portraits.
Caption
All 26 portraits on display.
Photo by Tim Bryant, Western Sentinel
There was also a group of airmen from 408 Tactical Helicopter Squadron who were in the clubhouse when the exhibit was being set up, who stayed until it was complete and then got up to take a look at it.
Project Heroes got its start in 2008, explained co-founder Cindy Revell. With the Afghan mission still ongoing, she said she and her partners—Susan Abma and Shairl Honey—would see the soldiers’ names and faces splash across TV screens.
“It’s pretty hard to watch that and not really feel something,” Revell said. “You feel for the families and the soldiers’ friends. You realize this is a very powerful thing that’s happening, this loss of life – it affects a lot of people.”
The spark to create Project Heroes came when Abma and Honey came across a Hello magazine that featured photos of the soldiers who had been killed. Since all three women were oil painters, it made sense they would use their talents to commemorate and personalize the soldiers on canvas.
While a photospread was the genesis of the project, Revell said she and her partners knew they wanted to do more than just recreate the media portraits used in the magazine.
“We knew we wanted the families to be involved,” she said.
The families’ involvement with the project is multifaceted, Revell said. She and her partners would speak with the families to better understand who the soldiers were, and get a non-military photo from them to use as the basis for the portrait. This was all done to show the soldiers were real people and not simply a statistic.
“How can we do this so that they’re more than just a number, more than just another face rolling across the TV?” Revell asked, explaining the push to humanize the soldiers through family stories and photos.
The three women would take those family photos and paint portraits of the soldiers, and then add on the uniform – combining the “sparkle and personality” of the person with the soldier persona.
“We really felt it was important for Canadians to have an understanding of who soldiers are,” Revell said. “It is important that they understand there’s a whole lot more to a soldier than what you see on the surface.”
Through the decade Project Heroes has been in the works, the three women learned a lot about the men and women they were commemorating. Chief among these lessons was that, contrary to common perception, soldiers are not all tough guys out looking for adventure. Instead, they’re frequently “soft-hearted, compassionate people.”
From speaking with family and friends, they learned the soldiers as children were the ones who would project other kids from bullies, befriend those who had no friends, and were animal lovers.
It was the desire to show that humanity and compassion that played directly into using the family photos to paint the portraits.
However, being in a position to paint the 80 portraits completed thus far was a challenge, Revell said. The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces do not share the families’ contact information, so Revell and her partners needed to track them down themselves.
In some cases the families did not wish to participate in the project, and in others the families could not be found. In both cases, Revell said she is hopeful the families will see the project and what it seeks to do, and get in touch to participate. But she will not push them to participate.
The Edmonton exhibition of Project Heroes was taken down on Nov. 15 and returned to storage. It had previously been on display at the Prince of Wales Armoury in Edmonton from November 2014 to March 2015, and July 2015 to October 2019, with a trip out to Government House in Regina, Sask. from March 2015 to July 2015.
The next planned exhibition, Revell said, is in Peachland, B.C. at the Peachland Art Gallery starting in November 2020.
In the interim, she said she and her partners are continuing to look for venues across Canada, and invite anyone who has a connection to a potential venue to reach out.