http://culture.wnyc.org/articles/features/2012/jan/05/art-brooklyn-artist-army-soldier/
Across the street from the noisy construction of the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn stands a brick five-story structure. The building's exterior is nondescript, but inside, delicate watercolors painted in pastel desert hues hang on the walls of artist David Pierce's studio.
The watercolors, by Pierce, depict the life of his high school buddy, army infantry specialist Justin Wilkens, while he was deployed in Iraq.
Pierce, 36, first heard his friend was enlisting in 2005.
“And I called him up and I said 'I think this is a really bad idea. Please don’t do it,'” he said, adding that he was worried about his friend’s safety. “And you know, we were 30 at the time, maybe late 20s. You can’t really tell your friend who is 29 years old how to live his life. So, that was the decision he made and I said, ‘You know, OK, but let’s do a project while you’re there.’”
Pierce asked Wilkens to email him photographs of life, as he was seeing it, in Iraq. Although his buddy had never taken pictures before, he started sending snapshots during his first six-month deployment in Iskandariya. During a second 13-month stint, Wilkens sent hundreds more photos from Baghdad that he or his fellow soldiers took.
By Abbie Fentress Swanson
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