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An art show and a talk with well-known area veterans will serve as focal points for a weekend of events that aim to bring together the community to better understand and support local veterans.
The Atherton Arts Foundation and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America are teaming up to present three days of art, conversation and activities, Nov. 14-16, at Holbrook-Palmer Park. The art show, which takes place Nov. 15-16, will highlight the diverse talents of local veterans.
The weekend kicks off Nov. 14 with a benefit evening featuring “Beyond the Uniform,” a discussion with three prominent local veterans: author Tobias Wolff, Tom House, director of Salesforce’s military program, and Dr. Dean Winslow of Stanford University.
The talk, which will honor Winslow, also offers early access to the art show. Winslow is a veteran whose long and decorated military career included multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and coordinating military public health work in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. He is now a professor of medicine and pediatrics at Stanford University. He co-founded an organization to provide aid to Middle Eastern and Central American refugees, and has also coordinated medical care for Iraqi children with complicated health concerns.
“This area has a very, very rich history of veterans. It has a very strong military history, and there are phenomenal veterans doing amazing things in medicine and technological innovation and community and public service,” said Dr. Kyleanne Hunter, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and a veteran who grew up in Atherton.
“As someone who is native here and now has the reins of a large organization, I want to make sure we organically build a space for the community to understand who we are and who veterans are,” she said.
Hunter was deployed in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and previously served as lead of the Women, Peace, and Security Initiative in the RAND National Security Research Division and a senior political scientist at RAND.
The weekend’s events raise funds for the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. The organization serves the newest generation of veterans, advocating for national policies that support veterans, as well as advocating on a more local level with employers and community groups.
Hunter and Winslow both pointed out that while many veterans’ organizations tend to be centered on the East Coast, veterans have different needs depending on where they live. For West Coast veterans, “there’s much more of a focus on employment, engaging with employers, on how innovation can work to improve the lives of veterans, and understanding that continued service takes different forms,” Hunter said.
“I think that this particular part of the country has been a little bit off the radar of veterans organizations. There are a lot of really smart people, and a lot of very patriotic people who would like to be involved, even those that have not necessarily served themselves — many of the the industry leaders right here in Silicon Valley,” Winslow said.
This weekend of arts-related events aims to forge more such connections with the community, starting with the Nov. 14 “Beyond the Uniform” talk with Wolff, House and Winslow. Hunter will moderate the discussion.
“Tobias has this storied career in memoir and storytelling, and one of the things that we’re really hoping to bring the community into in this conversation is the importance of veterans’ voices and veteran storytelling in Silicon Valley employment,” Hunter said.
Wolff is the author of numerous books, including the memoir “This Boys Life” and the novels “The Barracks Thief” and “Old School,” and a longtime faculty member at Stanford. Winslow said he counts Wolff as a friend after taking one of his writing classes a decade ago at Stanford’s School of Medicine.
“He’s a very thoughtful person and he is himself a combat veteran. He served as a Special Forces officer, Green Beret during the Vietnam War, and then went to Oxford University after he came home. Of course his career as both a novelist and a short story writer is pretty well known to a lot of Americans,” Winslow said. “Care of veterans is one of the things that’s important to him as well.”
The art show gives veterans a unique way to tell their stories. Organizers put out a call for local veteran artists, inviting them to submit works for the show. Among the works by about 15 artists, visitors will see a wide range of media, including oil, watercolor and acrylic paintings, pottery, crocheted dolls and woodworking.
“We have people who are painting landscapes based on where they’ve deployed. We have some great sculptures of animals that a local Marine’s kids made to send to him while he was deployed as a way to stay in touch,” Hunter said. “We’ve got art that honors different eras of the military, but it really is all across the map, because what we wanted to ensure was that people were able to create art that’s reflective of who they are. Some people are moved to paint trees. Other people are moved to paint animals, and some want to paint the scenes of who they were, or military vehicles. We wanted to give people that space to really be themselves.”
The art show kicks off on Nov. 15 at 10 a.m. with a “vet-together” meet-the-artists event with coffee and donuts. Each day of the art show will feature hands-on art activities for kids. The Atherton Arts Foundation is offering two art classes over the weekend, as well, with a sip and paint class with artist Mark Stapleton on Nov. 15, and a tea and art botanical printing class with artist Caroline Mustard on Nov. 16. Both are fundraisers for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
“I think it’s going to be really nice for folks in our amazing community to get to meet some veterans and to appreciate some of the challenges that the contemporary generation of veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan now face and how they potentially can help make the world a better place,” WInslow said.
Beyond the Uniform speaker event with Tobias Wolff and Tom House, honoring Dean Winslow, takes place Nov. 14, 6 p.m., and tickets are $250; the Veterans Art Show is held Nov. 15-16, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; admission is free. Sip and paint with Mark Stapleton takes place Nov. 15, 5 p.m., and tea and art with Caroline Mustard takes place Nov. 16, 2:30 p.m. Classes are $100 each or $175 for both.
All events take place at Holbrook-Palmer Park, 150 Watkins Ave., Atherton. For more information, visit iava.org.
