RE: “War Games: A Mother’s Perspective”
FOR INFORMATION: For more details about the exhibit described below, contact Kari Gunter-Seymour at 740-707-3135 (cell).
A Support the Troops art exhibit created by the mother of a 22-year-old Army corporal stationed in Ramadi, Iraq, is presently on display in the Susan Hensel Design Gallery in Minneapolis MN. The installation will make a two week showing in the Athens, Ohio area March 4-20 at the 16050 Canaanville Road Gallery (formerly the Adleta Galleries).
The show will then move on to The Thurman Street Studios in Portland OR in April.

ABOUT THE ‘WAR GAMES’ EXHIBIT
The original purpose of the exhibit was to raise awareness about the war (which she opposes) and encourage Americans to support the troops and vote in the upcoming election, Gunter-Seymour has created a three-room art exhibit ¬ titled “War Games: A mother’s perspective.”
The show debuted in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sept. 24-25 and was extended one week because of visitor demand – funded by Hocking College. The classes of hundreds of Hocking College writing and art students visited the exhibit, as did a crew from Brazil’s Global TV, which produced a documentary on swing states’ influence on the presidential election.
“This exhibit is dedicated to my son, Dylan, who is bravely serving his country in Iraq; his best friend, who was killed in Iraq in March 2004; and all of the other men and women who have fallen or are bravely striving to maintain the ideal of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom.’ And to each of their loved ones, who wait, terrified at home, for their safe return,” Gunter-Seymour says.
As a single mom, Gunter-Seymour has had a very special relationship with her son. She is an activist, and she talked with Dylan as he grew up about the Vietnam War and its high cost in human lives. On his 11th birthday (during the height of the G.I. Joe mania) he told his mother he was going to be a soldier when he grew up. He settled at the time for being a cub scout (and she for being one of his den mothers).
After graduating from high school, he attended Ohio University for a quarter, but there was little extra money to live on campus or cover other expenses. In May 2002, he enlisted in the Army, telling his mother, “I don’t want to get trapped in Appalachia, Mom!” He was stationed in South Korea, where he expected to be for another year. But in June, his orders changed: He was going to Iraq.

“My world imploded,” Gunter-Seymour says. “I could not sleep. I felt tears welling up constantly. So I turned to the only thing that I know how to do ¬ art. That’s how ‘War Games’ began.”
The first game she made was a chess board with a map of Iraq as its background. She fashioned the pieces from cardboard and mounted the faces of the “Bush Gang” and the “Osama Gang” on each piece. Soldiers are the pawns. She’s also created Iraqi Scrabble, armored Legos and a dartboard of Osama bin Laden.
The first room of the exhibit is filled with these whimsical creations. The second ¬ created in honor of Dylan’s best friend, who was killed in February when his Bradley was attacked near Fallujah,¬ bears a warning about its graphic nature. The third room is filled with news clippings and magazine covers related to the war and the Bush administration.

The Minnesota Women’s Press says “About the time Dylan landed in Iraq, Gunter-Seymour began gathering clippings, quotes and magazine covers about the conflict there. She visited the library and surfed the Internet for media coverage of the 2002 and 2003 advance to war.

The results are what Gunter-Seymour simply calls the facts boards: six large squares of cardboard, covered with paper and illustrations. They aren’t pretty. They aren’t even artistic. But they are moving. They are what Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 might have been, if you took out all the innuendo and replaced it with straight news.”

A soundtrack featuring music both from today and the Vietnam era is included in the exhibit. An interactive piece, the exhibit gives visitors information on how to correspond with American soldiers and encourages them to register to vote. Gunter-Seymour has created bumper stickers urging support for the troops and will sell them at the exhibit.
“What I am really trying to do is make people think a little more seriously about how to bring some order to the chaos that is occurring -- in Iraq and here at home,” she says. “Then, hopefully, they will feel compelled to write to their congressmen (form letters will be available) to express their concerns about the continued violence in Iraq. We each have a voice and the inalienable right to use it! Sometimes we forget that.”
“If the real rational for the Iraq War has been self-interested control — over oil resources, the regional economy, political influence, military bases — if it was not self-defense and not selfless liberation, then President Bush betrayed the trust of our soldiers, the Congress and the American people.” George Lakoff