Judy Rushin of Hammond, LA covered February 27--March 4,
2006 while she wore a white cotton glove on her right hand for six days with a
different news headline attached to her hand each day of the week. Her
intention was to treat the gloves as a meditation that she could reflect on
throughout the day: "I carefully held the war with me as a constant
reminder of suffering." The dingy fingertips of the gloves are a testament
to her commitment to this meditation.

Some of the glove-related artworks are not made of actual gloves, or in some cases hardly resemble hands; this diverse range attests to the myriad of ramifications of the war, not to mention Kane's openess to other artists' visions. For instance for the week of April 17--22, 2006 Atlantan Joe Peragine created a video animation depicting various scenes from war news headlines framed within a drawing of a white glove. He describes his piece as conveying not only the headlines from that week, but also the collective feelings of nervousness about the war's progress that tied the varied news reports together. A foreboding soundscape is utilized to capture the general sense of uneasiness; an insistent dripping of blood from the fingertips marks time and reminds one of the continually mounting toll. 

Scott Schuldt from  Seattle, WA also used an alternative medium for his gloves. During his contributing week of June 25--30, 2007,  Schuldt created gloves out of Kevlar fabric and  copper plates to make them "up-armored" like the soldiers on the battlefield. 

His statement expresses his frustration with the instability and lack of security that existed during the time he created his gloves:

At this point in the war, I didn't feel that it was necessary to go out of one's way to make a point; the facts speak for themselves as to what a mess the whole situation has become. The headlines for the week (and for one day, the lack of any real news) were just sad. At this point in time, no one should have to be wearing armor.

Richard Curtis from Florence, AL describes how he and his wife Lori expressed their opposing views on the war through hand poses they photographed during the week of January 21--26, 2008.

When I signed up to be one of the contributing artists for this  exhibition all I knew is that I did not want to make a direct, one-sided, response to the war. My interest was in making gestures in proximity to my political and social biases against the war. I chose to collaborate with my wife, Lori, to come up with hand/glove poses that somehow referred to our individual responses to the war, and also allowed for our differences. I am, by most standards, a fairly liberal-minded person. Lori, however, is a staunch Christian conservative Republican. We have very different views on many social and political issues. How we negotiate this contested territory on a daily basis is reflected in our responses to this exercise.
For the series of photographs we chose a pair of gloves. I wore the left glove and she wore the right glove, obviously to indicate our political leanings. Then, we made hand gestures in response to both our feelings about the war, and our feelings for each other. The exercise was further complicated in that the media source we chose to use was the standard nightly newscast from NBC. Of course, most all that was covered during the week we were to respond was the economy and the presidential race. It was as if the war was being forgotten. We both thought this was significant, in and of itself.

Curtis' statement sheds insight on their process and feelings, but it is also emblematic of the nuanced nature of The Hand to Hand Project's overall impact on our understanding of the wide range of responses the project embodies in its totality.

When the project is hanging, it is a testament to the tremendous length of the Iraq war: one difficult to imagine without the physical presence of the gloves. Covering all our available walls, the works are individually hung in chronological order, giving the viewer a day-by-day, year by year time-line of the war, in gloves hung eight and nine rows deep. (For the occasional week when artists who agreed to provide work have not done so, Kane hangs black cotton gloves in their stead.) The total linear feet runs over 160' in our space, though it could easily expand to more in a larger institution.

A dozen of the artists' works are three-dimensional and require display on shelves or pedestals near their respective time point, including two videos and one sound piece. Standing amongst the gloves it is astonishing to see the effort so many artists made to sustain the project. In a way the walls are like a patchwork quilt, each glove telling a different story and reflecting the many different hands that made them.

The Hand to Hand Project's collaborative scope works on the same epic scale as pieces such as Mel Chin's current Fundred project or Judy Chicago's monumental epic The Dinner Party (1974-1979). It too entailed the labor of hundreds of volunteers (who created a triangular table with 39 individual place settings for notable women symbolizing the history of women in Western civilization). Chicago's table operated as a time-line, similar to that created by the weeks of The Hand to Hand Project's gloves. Just as The Dinner Party's collaborative efforts were used to acknowledge and chronicle the impact that those women's lives had on society, so do the collaborative efforts of The Hand to Hand Project artists acknowledge and chronicle the impact of the Iraq war on civilian and non-civilian society.

Of the 195 artists including Kane herself, 138 are from Georgia; 47 hail from other U.S. states as follows:  Alabama, 6; Arizona, 2; California, 7; Florida, 2; Illinois, 1; Louisiana, 2; Maryland, 2; Mississippi, 1; New Mexico, 1; New York, 1; North Carolina, 7; Oregon, 3; Tennessee, 2; Vermont, 6; Virginia, 1; Washington, 2; and Washington, DC, 1; while 9 are from other countries as follows: Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Eritrea, Iraq (2), Somalia and Turkey, and a U.S. resident contractor  living in Baghdad at the time he created his glove works.

The Hand to Hand Project has exhibited at 13 venues from coast to coast since 2003 (including a showing of the 2006 gloves in our America on the Brink exhibit). Following close on the heels of our Closing Day Events, the project tours to the Chafee Center for the Arts in Rutland, VT--Kane's hometown--for its final exhibit, after which the artist will begin a search for a permanent home for the piece. (As another point of comparison, it took Chicago 23 years to find a permanent home for her iconic piece at The Brooklyn Museum of Art-we hope that Kane's search will be significantly shorter.)

To finalize the end of the creation phase of the The Hand to Hand Project Kane is producing an impressively comprehensive, approximately 400-page color catalog that will serve as a lasting document of the project and which will include: images of every single artists' work in chronological order starting with the first three years Kane sustained the project before inviting artists to contribute, selected artist statements, an introduction by Kane, a preface by photojournalist Kael Alford, a complete list of venues where the project has appeared, as well as a listing by residence of all of the artists and an index of their respective pages. Making the printing of this catalog possible is a substantial grant to ATHICA from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation along with smaller grants Kane was awarded by the Atlanta-based Idea Capital and the Women's Caucus for Art of GA.

Kane's The Hand to Hand Project represents the best of what contemporary  artists can offer the art-viewing public; the combination of a strong concept with an embrace of a variety of material  approaches that provide viewers with a  multivalent response to a vital contemporary concern--in this case a long and controversial war. 

Don't Forget to Learn,  Don't Learn to Forget

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.
Albert Camus, An Absurd Reasoning (1942)

Jim Buonaccorsi concludes his artist statement with this telling Camus quote, which reflects his desire that his artistic production
ask questions, addresses issues and acts as a social indicator of the time and place in this world in which we live. I am not so bold as to think my work can provide answers to the social, political, philosophical and theological issues it often addresses, nor is it an attempt at moralizing or passing judgment. This work is my way of confronting my own fears and misgivings of this life. Perhaps awareness of our inabilities would be at least half the battle towards making this a less complicated and volatile world.

Buonaccorsi has focused his career of a quarter-century on creating meticulously crafted works relating to war. Don't Forget to Learn, Don't Learn to Forget, his colossal 14-foot tall, 9-foot wide by 30-foot long steel and cast iron sculpture is his largest to date and debuts here after more than four years in the making.

A large rectangular furnace filled with metal skulls rests at the end of a set of train tracks. Riding the tracks is a metal cart containing the horrifying results of the furnace's activity. The underside of the cart and tracks are lined with coke, a modified form of coal used by blacksmiths to heat metal to high temperatures, a  technology that of course makes possible the production of armored vehicles as well as metal art. The skulls piled high in the cart are made even more sinister by the three-digit number branded on each forehead alluding to the cold statistics of warfare.

The furnace has two large latched doors on the front: one reading in all caps, "AGAIN MAN'S STUPIDITY REARS ITS UGLY HEAD" and the other reading "DON'T LEARN TO FORGET, DON'T FORGET TO LEARN." These phrases are embossed along the perimeter of the door and painted fire engine red against the oil-treated rust patina on the iron surface. In the same fashion there are two smaller doors on each side of the furnace that read "DEATH BY WAR" and "DEATH BY IDEALS."

In the rear of the furnace is a small round porthole that can be lifted for viewing the glowing red interior. Lit thus the skull-filled furnace alludes to a hellish fire burning flesh from bone that is inexhaustibly stoked by war. (It is also most pointedly a reference to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, reflecting the artist's father's service in World War II.)

In the face of such a foreboding power the viewer feels miniscule and helpless looking up at the five ominous square chimneys atop the 14-foot tall furnace. Sitting in the space of the relatively small gallery viewers are forced to negotiate the work's large scale personally, its angle necessitating that they walk around the length of the track, forcing them as well to confront the enormity of its message.

Buonaccorsi's satirical commentary on the primitive nature of war stems from a long family history of  military service. His father served in World War II and his brothers served in Vietnam, while Buonaccorsi missed the draft by a year. In military style, the numbers 410 and below 57 is stenciled in red on the furnace and the number 41057 on the cart, as if they were nothing more than additional statistics perpetuated by "man's stupidity." In fact April 10, 1957 is the artist's birth date. By using it the piece becomes autobiographical, speaking about the artist's lack of personal identity in a culture that recognizes individuals by social  security, bank account, and in the era of his brethren, draft card numbers.

Buonaccorsi explained, "Although as a species we continue to make claims of great progress in both civilization and technology, this progress is often misused." Through his art he expresses this frustration and calls the attention of the viewers to the systemic problems with human development. "The same mistakes are constantly being made and our technology, which is most often war generated, has merely made us more efficient at making those mistakes." He concludes his most recent statement, written specifically for this exhibit thus:
Unfortunately it is apparent that the human race has a short and fleeting memory. What may be considered its greatest attribute, the power of reason, may also be its biggest curse, as we are the only species that knowingly and wantonly kills our own!

Don't Learn to Forget, Don't Forget to Learn, Buonaccorsi's title obviously refers to the cyclic motion of history the artist often addresses in his work, pointing out in memorable sculptural form how our very inability to learn from our mistakes obstructs the path to the more peaceful world so many of us urgently desire.

A longtime sculpture professor at the University  of Georgia's Lamar Dodd School of Art, Don't Learn to Forget, Don't Forget to Learn was made possible in part by a Senior Faculty Research Grant from the Franklin College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Georgia.