Major
Art
Advisor
Samson, Lilla
Advisor Department
Art & Art History
Date
12-2021
Keywords
military spouse: painting: interview:
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Abstract
MICHELLE HENNING (Art)
Seen and Unseen, The MilSpouse Project
Sponsor: Lilla Samson (Art and Art History, Emerita)
I was a military spouse for 20 years. To honor this closing chapter of my life, I developed a project to interview and paint several military friends. My intention was to create a theme of the overlooked, often unseen, spouse. This is not absolute, and it is not to detract from the service of the soldier; but Military Spouses are often misunderstood or mis-represented. I hope to celebrate the inspiring people that form the group known as "MilSpouses". For that reason, I interviewed former and current military spouses that I know personally. Collecting the good, bad, happy, and painful stories, I looked at the threads that bind us. The reason for including my own story was to illustrate a common theme; there are thousands of these same connections in each military community.
This is a small glimpse of those who stand beside their soldiers. Although the stories are anonymous, they show how we are not that different from “civilian spouses”. We share many of the same hardships, in different forms, and we are not Superheroes.
During the time of Covid, while coordinating over zoom, email, and FaceTime, I completed seven oil paintings that represent the strength and spirit of these friends to accompany the stories. Beauty, diversity, and tremendous courage, I wanted this to show through in these portraits, while keeping their identities secure.