Martin, a badass Navy Seal, spoke like a pirate guarding his treasure and rum. Martin, a fortified encasement that housed a warm and delicate heart. A heart so finely tuned that butterflies waited in line to feel its pulse as they lit on his fingertips.
Yes, we’re engaged in building two huge sculptures of a Dragon and a Phoenix. And so we wind up asking each other an obvious question: what is art? Is it therapy we asked? No, we’re not therapists. We don’t want to engage in therapy.
We call him that because he has infused the wisdom learned in his war experience into the the structure and texture of the Dragon’s Heart. His Dragon Heart started out as clay. It’s image was pressed into a wheelbarrow full of wet ditch sand.
Back in 2013, I was a civilian bystander.
Sure, I was concerned about our perpetual wars and the trauma that follows in their wake. But I was also strangely detached.