Ther Howling of Impotence
This month brings a time of passage from the dark of Winter to the rebirth and renewal of Spring. However, our world continues to host a great darkness as we witness the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Therefore, I have chosen to focus the April Sculpture of the Month on a piece from my Rosecrans Series, which sought insight for how to get past war. The piece expresses my own increasing sense of impotence concerning the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Ukraine. I feel so deeply moved by the courage of the Ukrainian people and their defense forces.
Although the modern era since WWII has seen an overall decline in violence (See: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker), we still continue to brutally kill each other whenever we feel it justified. Russia’s bombing of civilians and children in Ukraine has its contemporary precedent in our own country, of course. The USA invaded Iraq and previously Vietnam, targeting civilians and children, with national leaders offering falsely idealistic imperatives about defending freedom and democracy.
Two of the new names from my most recent sculpture naming session also strike me as relevant for our current predicament: The Rules Do Not Apply & I Swear This Has Never Happened Before. These titles evoke both the cognitive dissonance and the collective oblivion we find ourselves grappling with as we attempt to uphold values of peace despite our nation’s hypocrisy about war.
I long for the day when war will no longer be considered an acceptable way to address our differences. The April Sculpture of the Month invites us to recognize our feelings of impotence and move past them to support non-military means of conflict-resolution. We must howl for common sense international rules that hold those accountable who would use modern military equipment to target innocent people’s homes, lives, and cultural heritage.
This war in Ukraine should become our last. It should call us to foster an international solidarity for peace before the catastrophic power of modern war destroys us all. Are we up to to the task?
