Lora:

I came from a creative family; my father is not only a career Marine but he’s also a writer, painter, and sculptor. My mother was very crafty and reinvented our home every time we PCS’d (Permanent Change of Station). She had an amazing eye. She didn’t paint often but if there was a painting that she couldn’t afford but wanted for our home she recreated it.

I grew up a military brat and moved often. When our family moved in the middle of the summer it was a challenge for a shy person [like me] to meet new friends. My mother would sign me up for special art classes or horseback riding lessons or tennis lessons or swimming lessons. This helped me acclimate to new areas and get to know children that enjoyed the same things I enjoyed.

The one constant in my life other than my immediate family was my grandparents on my mother’s side. They were dairy farmers in Frederick, Maryland. I was not only born there while my father was in Vietnam, I also spent many summers there. My grandparents were very supportive of my creativity; one story they love to retell is the day I decided to make a large drawing by hammering nails into the dirt floor in their garage. Every time they tell the story, everyone giggles and says they can’t believe how much time I spent hammering nails into the dirt to make a beautiful design.

Growing up, I always had sketchbooks. In high school, I was into everything art. When I started applying to colleges, we lived just south of the Washington DC area in a place called Stafford County. Back then, the only option for a military kid was to apply for in-state tuition, and we were in Virginia. I wanted to go to an art school, so I applied to VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University). I never knew I was a military brat until I went to college. I wouldn’t say I started consciously studying military brats until about 25 years ago. My work combines studies of the South, studies of military families and military brat subculture, along with identity in general. I’ve also studied war-related Post Traumatic Stress as well as secondary Post Traumatic Stress in brats.

When people ask where I’m from, I say everywhere and nowhere just to be a little funny. Saying this leads to questions, then a longer conversation. I was born in Frederick, Maryland, but we quickly moved to San Pedro, California, and then back to Fredericksburg, Virginia, then to North Carolina and South Carolina, then to Hawaii. Hawaii is where my brother was born. Then we moved to Wisconsin, then back to Maryland, then to Virginia again. I’ve spent the most time in the South, particularly Virginia, which I’ve adopted as my home. 

To say that I only lived in nine places as a kid would be misleading. It’s not that simple. Within those nine PCS, my family made several smaller moves—to different houses, for example, and our family was not unique. Many military families move two to three times within each PCS. This can also mean changing schools two to three times within a short period of time. 

The reason I’m telling you about these moves is that there was a lot of exploration and adventure in my childhood. A lot of exploring new cultures. I found myself becoming very item-oriented. I would see new things in new cities that identified new cultures. The uniqueness of new items always fascinated me. There is comfort in items that you see repeatedly; for example, for military families, seeing collections of spoons from across the country and different countries [is a comfort]. With that item or image nearby, there was an unspoken feeling or knowing that you had a lot in common with people. The steins on the mantelpiece for those that lived in Germany. The dolls and the kimonos from those that lived in Japan. I’m interested in culture, I’m interested in identity, I’m interested in the military brat subculture because that is a relatively new area of study. I consider myself an auto-ethnographic artist.

Collateral:

Among civilians, I’ve noticed that there’s a sense of mystery (or obscurity) surrounding the realities of a military kid’s life. For example, a lot of people know that military kids move often and that’s disruptive to their social lives and schooling, but I’ve found that we don’t often discuss the effects of military service and institutions on children. We don’t think about what “disruption” or even “move” really look and feel like.

What kind of advantages do you think military kids have as they grow into young adults? I’m curious about this from all angles, whether you see them benefitting as artists, students, adventurers, leaders, etc.

And the other side of the coin: what disadvantages do you think military kids must navigate? 

Lora:

That is true; we don’t often discuss the impact of military service and institutions on children. We know, in general, that military kids move a lot and that’s a little disruptive to their social lives and schooling. But the reality of it and the nuances are vast. Honestly, I could write chapter after chapter to answer this question. 

A couple of months ago I googled why military personnel are ordered to move so often. Here’s what I found out: the straightforward answer, the only answer given, was that this originally prevented service members from creating strong bonds with their peers. Why? Without creating connections, we don’t feel so deeply when peers are killed. The military truly discourages families from staying anywhere longer than three years.

If you’re studying military children, you must consider this, then ask: how does that reason affect military personnel? Then you must ask: how does that affect a military brat when their parents are experiencing such disconnection? Then, what is it doing to a child whose brain is still forming? A child’s brain is forming without developing connections. When you talk to psychologists and psychiatrists, you realize that you have two very different experiences: an adult brain dealing with these situations or questions, and a child’s brain dealing with these situations and questions. 

Let me speak for myself and many of my peers, with whom I’ve had many conversations on this subject. As a person who grew up only having attachments with their immediate family (mother and brother)—and keep in mind that my family was under severe stress caused by war, alcoholism, separation from extended family, and a father who was gone half of my formative living—my brain was never taught to connect with others at a young age. I am a direct result of that. Do I make friends quickly? Yes. Do I move on quickly and easily? Yes. There are positives to this and negatives. Therapists will say I have a fear of intimacy; I say I have a fear of loss, so I protect myself from loss and create scenarios where I feel loss the least. My brain is hardwired to endure massive amounts of loss; this is my culture. 

At the same time, I have almost no fear of the unknown. I have no problem throwing myself into the abyss and seeing what’s inside. In fact, it’s both a challenge and an adventure. Do I apologize for any of this? No. Again, this is what being a military brat is. This is what resilience is. This is what resilience looks like later in life.

What kind of advantages do military kids have as they grow into young adults? We often are overachievers. The resilient ones figure it out and are much better off. But entirely too many military brats struggle in their teens and on into adulthood. We must name the struggles to work on them. Most of the rhetoric available on brats is about generalized situations. But there are lots of “other” types of situations. Just to name one, I have met married military couples with children and both parents are deployed at the same time. That’s not supposed to happen, but it does. Children sometimes go into foster care because of no extended family. The first attempt is to place the child in a military connected family, but that does not always happen.  

And yet, as students, what better way to learn about the world than travel it? You’re not just reading about history, you’re living next to it or in it, you’re walking through castles, you’re walking along the Berlin Wall, you’re talking to East and West Germans, you’re speaking three languages. You get a sense of the larger picture, how the entire world is connected, and how to interact within those worlds. 

A lot of military brats who are adults now feel a part of everything but then, at the same time, a part of nothing—quite alone—not necessarily in a bad way. A lot of us feel at home only recently with the advent of Facebook, which facilitates adult brat groups. Here are groups of people that simply get how we feel without us having to explain it, and it is a challenge to explain feeling part of everything and nothing at the same time. 

I often don’t even feel a part of my own family—my blood family, that is. My father is an adult military brat. We have a relationship and I would say that it is good now, but it was very strained for many years. He was not in the home while I was growing up; therefore, he never gave me brat advice. He also never thought about his military bratness. He was focused on being a Marine, the toughest of the tough. 

On the other hand, my mother was a farmer’s daughter. Upon marrying my father, she had no idea what to expect. Being a military wife or mother was a mystery. She most definitely did the best she could. 

If you wanted to compare my upbringing to anyone else’s, you could look at third culture kids. What is it like when a child is raised by people who were born and raised in one culture, yet you’re being raised while living in another culture? This is a huge area of study. Then combine that with the newest studies of peers being the biggest influences on children other than nature and nurture. We all want to identify. That is one of the biggest needs in human nature other than food, water, and safety. We all constantly look for ourselves in culture. I will use my family as example. My mother lived in one place until she married. The way she was raised, her culture, informed most of her decisions. My brat culture, on the other hand, informed most of my decisions. I made friends quickly, but not necessarily with the best people. I expedited friendships, instinctively knowing I may not be around long. That meant latching onto the first person that offered attention. My mother’s words still ring in my ears, “Why do you put all your eggs in one basket?” I created a class on this subject; it is called the Hundred Year Starship. I wanted to create a fun art game that better helped people understand how place and time effected behavior. Teens from Henrico High School for the Arts took my class and I filmed it. Most in the class were not brats, but teachers reached out to me to help everyone else better understand their brat peers. If you listen to the final talk, you can hear how taking the nonbrats out of their comfort zones allowed for a better understanding of their military connected peers. 

Some quick contemporary brat culture references…there’s the old Pat Conroy (Great Santini) but then there’s also recent examples like the HBO series We Are Who We Are. I often use these as reference points or starting off points for work. I have a few Instagram accounts, too, where I put very quick ideas that eventually flesh out into much larger, more detailed mixed media pieces. I only post some of my harsher subject matter on Instagram. My work in galleries, museums, and on Facebook is more PG13. A lot of my work is considered for educational tools, and it has to be age appropriate.

As an artist I am certainly an amalgamation of everywhere I’ve been and lived. I work with subject matter that is rarely addressed or the study of which is in its infancy. I never would have guessed that as an adult, I’d be working with this subject matter, but I consider it my duty. 

Collateral:

Who is your art family?

Lora:

I would say I have two separate art families. One is my artist & art teacher friends. They belong to galleries I belong to. These are the people that I spend the most time with. And then there’s my military brat art friends and peers. These people are scattered all over. I talk to, work with, and consider Donna Musil of Brats Without Borders, a great friend. She lives in Colorado. She and I worked on an 8-year project together called Unclassified: The Military Kid Art Show. Now, I’m working with Dr. Circe Olson Woessner of the Museum of the American Military Family in Tijeras, New Mexico. Interestingly, we’ve been working together over three years, and I would consider her a friend, but we’ve never physically met. She and I worked on the anthology SHOUT!, which turned into SHOUT! the play.

Collateral:

As an artist, how did you learn what material was “harsh” and what was “age appropriate”? I ask not only as an editor, but as a military spouse and scholar of war literature; I’ve had to learn where the divide between military and civilian cultures is by finding where comfort zones end, leaving the artist on the fringes, an outsider. Can you tell me about how you learned to know your work and those who view it? 

Lora:

I went to school for fine art, and for teaching art. I was taught what was age appropriate. When you work with the U.S. public school systems, you learn very quickly what is “age appropriate.” When I start on a piece, though, I’m not consciously thinking, “this is for a certain age.”

Harsh is a relative term. Some things are considered harsher by civilian schools and civilian teachers than they are by schools that serve predominantly military families. A good example is most civilian schools will tell children they’re not allowed to draw guns or any sort of war paraphernalia. But to a military child, this is really confusing; this imagery is life, everyday life. Not bad. Just mom or dad’s job. 

I did recently teach a workshop at a school that wanted Blue Ribbon status (they wanted to be on a national list that lets families know they are welcoming of military families), and they did allow me to teach art classes where we talked about visual subject matter not allowed to be drawn in public schools but seen and lived by most military brats—an example being large artillery trucks parading in the streets. The school did allow the teens to see this imagery and draw it if they wanted to. I had to get special permission and there was a lot of dialogue with the kids about comfort levels, and how it was okay to ask to move if you preferred not to look at someone’s drawing of what they were visually processing. How if your neighbor changed seats it shouldn’t be taken as someone not liking your drawing; it might have been subject matter that person didn’t want to see or think about at that moment. Everyone process experiences differently. 

And of course, anything sexualized or gender-related is still mostly taboo. Right now, I’m working with Circe on the play SHOUT! It’s an LGBTQ+ play, true stories about military families, and even though there are references to grade school-aged characters and high schoolers in the play, we still had to have the discussion about who could see the play, and who we would be marketing to. I had to take it to high schools and let them read the script, and it was funny that what I thought would have kept it out of a high school was not the conversations about sexuality or gender but the cuss words.

The anthology SHOUT! Sharing Our Truth (same name as the play, which evolved from some of the pieces in the anthology) includes stories and art, is rated R. In the book, I have a personal story and a few pieces of artwork. There are two images in the anthology that would probably not be welcome anywhere other than in a book for adults. One piece is called “Jacks” and the other is called “Christmas Outside the Gates”. Imagery in “Jacks” is of two little girls playing jacks; one sits on the edge of an armoire, and inside you see a stack of porn. “Christmas Outside the Gates” features call girls just outside the U.S. military base gates in Germany. These are things you notice as a military kid, a lot. But people can get very mad, seeing it in art.

I don’t do very well with corporate galleries. It’s funny, I’ve had corporate galleries call me and say that they want to hang my work, and they’re only basing that offer on seeing one or two pieces. Then I send a body of work and they say, “oh we can’t hang this on our walls.” To me, being truthful in my art is more important than anything else.

Collateral: 

What about your deviled egg plate images? How did you make those?

Lora:

I obsessively design and create. Because I am an artist and business owner, I have my phone on me always. My phone became my sketchbook. I don’t think very hard when I sketch, I just do it. I grab objects from the internet and combine, and in my classrooms, I encourage students to make art from whatever is available around their home or neighborhood. One morning, a child showed me the work they created the night before at home. I asked if they created the work in Photoshop, and they said they used a free app called PicsArt (a scaled down version of Photoshop for your phone). I have been hooked ever since. 

The Deviled Egg series happened because I am attracted to egg plates. Each one is so unique. They are a part of my mother’s upbringing on the farm. There was never a gathering without deviled eggs. Grenades are a perfect shape fit with the egg plate, and Dad often brought work home. I have handled a practice grenade before. Grenades also can be unique in color and style. I loved the dichotomy of the two objects, and of course placing them together creates an interesting dialogue. 

The virtual cutting and pasting in the work is a relaxing repetitive process. The process lowers my heart rate. That is exactly what you need when you have been triggered into a Post Traumatic Stress moment. I have rewired my own brain to not disassociate.

Collateral:

What kind of relationship do you think the military has with art (particularly art created by service members and their families)? Do you think that relationship is changing?

Lora:

What a great question! My answer is multi-layered. I automatically think of a few places and organizations: military museums and creative programs supported financially by the military. 

Yes, I do think the relationship is changing, but it’s painstakingly slow.

My focus has always been the military brat. But to understand a brat, I had to study and follow the subculture. The military has always had field artists and the GI Bill; we have the WPA. We have many military museums that show art made by military personnel. I can only think of one that shows work by military spouses, partners, and military brats on a regular basis. (The only museum I know that includes the whole family is The Museum of the American Military Family and Learning Center, and they are not funded by the military.) I think families support their work themselves, independently. Some military-funded museums have traveling shows. These are fleeting, however. 

The military has a long history with art. But do they show it? Not enough, in my opinion. The military is more than just war. It seems to me that independent curators outside of the military are putting together more in-depth shows that share the bigger picture. 

Recently, Tara Tappert of Arts and The Military, Janis Albuquerque of O Dark Thirty Magazine, and I drove to New York City to The American Folk Art Museum to see War and Pieced: The Annette Gero Collection of Quilts from Military Fabrics. There were quilts made mostly by British military personnel, but spouses and military brats were included. It was an amazing show! Well-rounded, I felt, because it showed how art can transform and heal the whole family in times of war. This show, of course, drew a vast audience. 

I feel the story of American military family members, spouses, and brats is shared in a very limited way (and mostly through academia). For example, the exhibit The Arts and the Military: MOVING through MEMORIES of Service and Conflict at the Hylton Performing Arts Center on the Manassas Campus of George Mason University is a collaboration with the Veterans and the Arts Initiative. This was a well-rounded show with a lecture included, but it was tucked away in the academic community. Then there was Veterans in Society: Changing the Discourse in 2013, and the Center for the Study of Rhetoric in Society at Virginia Tech. I often go to these workshops, and they include family subject matter. 

There are also art programs aimed at social/emotional health. That is what Military Kid Art Project falls under. The Military funds some art programs for the mental health of military personnel and families. Families can often attend for free or a minimal amount when they are with their service member. I think these programs are very important. But I think the military and partnered programming could do much better. I have yet to hear of an art program specifically for spouses of military. Other than Military Kid Art Project and Brat Art Institute, I don’t believe there is anything creative available with true military brat content. I am purposely leaving out all the programs that receive money for military families that allow families to go and take free art classes but do not include wellness content like, say, a Yellow Ribbon Program, or that have any permanency.

I would like to take this opportunity now to thank you for what you are doing and creating. Collateral is exactly the “well-rounded art” I have been talking about. 

Collateral: 

Well, thanks. And I hear you. One of the reasons Collateral started was to amplify the voices of people indirectly impacted by military service and violent conflict; there are many venues interested in publishing/featuring the work of service members and veterans, but still very few with space, time, and resources dedicated to groups including families.

Lora:

Has Collateral applied for grants given by the government to art in the military? Received any?

Collateral:

Collateral has partnered with organizations receiving these, and we’ve received grants in the past, but they’ve always been either from academic institutions or local/state-funded arts organizations. We’re a small journal run by volunteer editors. Our mission includes supporting service members, veterans, families, and community members, and since Covid hit, our programming outside the journal has been on hold. For example, we used to offer writing workshops on and off post near Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and we facilitated poetry workshops in a detention center for undocumented youth, whose lives were upended by violent conflict in Central America and at the U.S.-Mexican border. We published an anthology of their poems during the pandemic, in lieu of workshops, and that was supported by the city of Tacoma.

That’s not to say we don’t plan to apply for support from military & government programs in the future. 

I find that military families (and artists impacted by war, including refugees, immigrants, survivors, and activists) are usually expected to find support from organizations entirely separate from the military. Sometimes support is there, but many times, it isn’t. Military-connected artists aren’t always accepted or welcomed by civilian arts communities; they are still othered. It’s strange because it seems civilian organizations expect military-connected artists to be supported by the military, and the military expects the opposite, so we get caught in between, often unsupported by either, supported by ourselves. 

Lora:

What I see is that there are more people eager to support veterans who are artists and fewer people who want to support spouse artists (and fewer still who want to support military brat artists). The public still struggles to understand what a military brat is, and civilian organizations seem to be afraid of brat vernacular. As a brat who studies brats, I spend a lot of time educating people. 

When asking for donations for our creative brat programs, we often hear military families say they already gave to a larger military family organization like the Wounded Warrior Project. What most non-artists don’t realize is that most funding never filters down to children’s programs that provide well rounded emotional support. From the beginning of the most recent wars, I was asked to be involved in helping create the children’s portion of Yellow Ribbon Programs. I was asked to do the work pro bono, which I often did, to prove myself. Once I’d proved that my programming worked well, I asked for reimbursement of supplies and hourly payment of $10 an hour. I was told no money would be given by the organization but the families in attendance would be asked to donate personally in order for their child to attend creative, age specific, Yellow Ribbon programing.

I soon found out that at least 60% of the families wanting to attend our art programs were on the poverty line. I realized I had to create, fund, and implement art programming for myself. Military Kid Art Project is programming created by adult military brats, taught by adult military brats who are not only professional artists but also professional teachers. (We also employ social workers, psychiatrists, and therapists when needed.) At the end of each program, we have a public art showing of the students’ work. The sentence I hear the most is “I never knew my child felt that way or was thinking about that! Thank you.” 

I think what many adults forget is that when adults express themselves they have more experience and a larger vocabulary to describe what they are feeling. Children have an easier time drawing thoughts because visuals can encompass so much more. There are wonderful studies by Harvard’s Project Zero and writings by Howard Gardner based on years of Blue Ribbon artwork from children. The point of his studies: children have much more to say culturally if we take the time to look, if we give them the safe space to say it. 

I am reminded of the original group of my peers trying to obtain the first Wikipedia page for military brats. The backlash and fighting between people stating brats are not a culture was surreal! As brats, we want to meet and talk to others that have had similar experiences and who understand our unusual lifestyle. Brats want to be acknowledged. I believe, and so do all the professionals I have spoken to in my field, that talking about all aspects of our culture helps to traverse the ups and downs better (as we see with veteran and spouse groups). But as Mary Edwards Wertsch once stated, “There is a reason why denial is so integral to military life. The possibility of war and death is so real and so close that to constantly feel its immanence would be unbearable.” The questions that come to my mind are: why should a military brat coming of age during the current wars struggle as much as I did after the Vietnam war? And how can I help? 

I honestly feel that Mary Edwards Wertsch, Donna Musil, Circe Woessner and I have all offered new information, and new information often scares people. Wertsch is the mother of it all, with her release of Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood inside the Fortress. She was the first to define military brat categories in clear organization and with actual data. Musil created the first documentary on brats titled Brats: Our Journey Home. Her film would have been accepted by an even larger audience if she had left out the discussion of rape. 

Military Kid Art Project, with Unclassified: The Military Kid Art Show, brought together our brat history, sharing almost 75 years of brat artwork from across the globe. However, many people have decried what we show (the realness of guns, danger, alcoholism, etc). I’m proud of the work my peers and I have accomplished and how far it has gone, but just like Collateral, it isn’t making any money.

Collateral:

Do you come across military-connected artists who feel supported by either the civilian or military community, one more than the other? Do you come across military-connected artists who feel wholly supported or unsupported? 

Lora:

Sure. Veteran artists that play it safe, veteran artists that paint war ships or planes, veteran artists that paint portraits and artists that make utilitarian objects are in museums and major magazines—I’ve met some who feel more supported by their own communities than others. Artists like Carrie Waller, military spouse and watercolorist, is perhaps one of the best living watercolorists I am aware of. Carrie documents her military family’s travels through studies of objects like tea pots and cleaning supplies belonging to PCSing families. This is safe subject matter but is she in any military-funded museums? No, but she should be. Again, museums are telling a small portion of the whole story through limited points of view and limited voices. A lot of museums are struggling to add to history through new voices, as we see through the language of Black Lives Matter and the MeToo Movement. 

The most famous military brat fine artist (has work in museums, is not a military-connected artist by my definition) is perhaps Annie Leibovitz. Check out Pilgrimage. The Smithsonian has a permanent collection of this body of work. The show speaks of her cultural heritage but does not mention being a military brat. Most brats do not consciously, concisely understand how much the culture informs their lives; either that, or they do not want to share that part of their life, as if it’s a dirty secret. If artists don’t understand and curators don’t understand, then how does it get remembered? We all know there are huge parts of history hidden. I could go on and on… 

Collateral: 

You’re right. There’s so much to say. If you could tell me in just a few sentences how “consciously, concisely” the military culture informs all military brats and their work, how would you say it?

Lora:

I would have to quote others who have said it better than I ever could. This is from the preface of Mary Edwards Wertsch’s Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress: “…other people had backgrounds, but I did not… They came from real places. I didn’t. They knew their relatives. I didn’t. They identified with a region of the country. I didn’t… I had assumed I was some kind of generic nobody, a kid from nowhere and everywhere…Warrior society is characterized by a rigid authoritarian structure, frequently mirrored inside its families, extreme mobility; a great deal of father absence; isolation and alienation from the civilian community; an exceedingly strict class system; a very high incidence of alcoholism, which also suggests possibly high rates of family violence; a deeply felt sense of mission; and, not least, an atmosphere of constant preparation for war, with the accompanying implication for every family that on a moment’s notice the father can be sent to war, perhaps never to be seen again.” 

Collateral: 

What do you have coming up? How can viewers engage with your work in the near future? Any virtual events or openings or collaborations?

Lora:

Because SHOUT! Sharing Our Truth (the anthology) was so well received, the Museum of the American Military Family has commissioned me to start working on an LGBTQ+ Military Family Anthology, volume II. I have been collecting stories for over a year and am still open to more. Whomever may be reading this, please feel free to contact me about your personal story. This is open to all, including allies.

SHOUT! the play was just read on November 12, 2021, and it will be presented in a couple days at the 5th National Summit: Promoting Inclusivity Among Military Connected Healing Communities through the Arts, which takes place November 17-19, 2021, and will be hosted on ZoomGov.com. SHOUT! will also be presented at the University of Rhode Island Providence campus, and it will be presented in a full performance next June in celebration of PRIDE Rhode Island and PRIDE FEST 2022. That will be free and open to the public, located at U of Rhode Island (Paff Auditorium, 80 Washington Street, Providence 02903) For more info, people can call 401-277-5206 or email uri.artsandculture@gmail.com. 

Brats Without Borders is in the pre-planning stages of rereleasing our award-winning traveling show, Unclassified: The Military Kid Art Show online, as well as in a print format to allow smaller venues like schools to share. 

You can find my personal work on my website, www.lorabeldon.com. I have three accounts on Instagram; one is my personal fine art under @LKBeldon. Another is @military_kid_art_project where (along with my Facebook page) I post about upcoming art classes or camps for brats. I also run @brat_pop, a visual pop-culture brat zine.