Art of War: Museum of Works By Vietnam Vets In Financial Straits

"I had the experience of learning about the value of life in Vietnam," said museum curator Mike Helbing, whose first work of art, titled "Raw and Naked," was a painting of a chicken on a chopping board. He later expanded the work to tack the chicken (bought from a poultry shop) to a piece of wood. "Some of [his experience of death in war] was very expensive," he said. "Some of it was very cheap. I think you spend the rest of your life trying to figure it out. Maybe you never do."

Helbing, 60, served as a specialist with the Army in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970.

Charlie Shobe, 66, of Frederick County, Md., has seven paintings at the museum, including a depiction of a dead soldier, his skull white and hairless as it juts from the neckline of his uniform. Shobe completed the painting, "Waiting for Henry Kissinger," in 1990, more than 20 years after he returned from his tour in Vietnam as a Marine Corps reaction-force platoon commander and company commander.

Shobe started painting as a teenager and continued when he came home from Vietnam. While in graduate school, he focused on what he felt were the injustices of the war.

"The war is with you all of the time," said Shobe, who became a landscape painter. "I thought the war was a great tragedy. I think the war in Iraq is a great tragedy. My work kind of shows the tragedy of it, pretty much. I have great admiration for a lot of people I served with. But the war itself was a great mistake."

Shobe doesn't consider his war art to be healing. "I hate to use that word 'healing' because it's been so overused," he said. "I was just pleased they took my paintings in and hung them on the walls."

As curator, Helbing is responsible for putting together the exhibits, including the newest one from veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. It features photographs of combat buddies, soldiers on missions, soldiers missing limbs. Not all the images are of violence. Some feature smiling women, or U.S. troops playing with Iraqi schoolchildren or a soldier carrying a baby.

"In a way, this museum has become an inadvertent monument," said James Baker, 58, president of FOB Healing Arts Inc., an Indianapolis-based nonprofit organizationthat collaborates with the museum. Its main mission is to support healing of combat veterans through art. Baker served with the Navy's Seabees in Vietnam.

"We have Jefferson's archives," he said. "We have Washington's archives. We have the Smithsonian. We need this, too."