The Helmet Project

Exciting news: Visual artist Cindy Kane will be showing her wonderful “Helmet Project” at the Sherry Leedy Gallery in Kansas City starting tomorrow night. Here is a description of the show:

The Helmet Project evolved as a natural progression of Cindy Kane’s respect for journalists and the desire to create a visual tribute to their work. Kane envisioned a memorial monument created by an installation circle of 50 used steel military helmets, suspended, floating in space, each a stand-in portrait for a specific journalist. She invited journalists who had covered conflicts from WWII to Iraq to collaborate with her and they mostly agreed, generously sending her their handwritten notes and travel artifacts. Kane in turn collaged these evocative materials onto used military helmets and layered on her painting practice, transforming each helmet from sorrowful reminder to intimate precious object, a relic.  In the process Kane changed the ephemera of travel detritus into poignant conceptual portraits of individual writers and created an encircling community of journalism itself. The visual impact of The Helmet Project brings home the reality of danger, risk and vulnerability that each of these individual journalists has experienced and the remarkable lives that they have led.

Some of the featured journalists include Gwendolyn Brooks, Tony Horwitz, Dana Priest, Scott Simon, and Barbara Demick. My helmet (shown below) displays my Russian visa, notes about Cambodian genocide, a Mozambican beer label, Band Aids, and dangling ear plugs. Check out Cindy Kane’s website, and — if you’re in the area — stop by her show at Sherry Leedy, 2004 Baltimore, Kansas City, Missouri. The opening is this Friday from 7 – 9 p.m. and the show stays up until February 27. It is profound.