by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
Veterans and their families throughout Minnesota – and beyond – are thrilled about an artistic work-in-progress that honors more than 200 years of veterans’ sacrifices for American freedom.
The work, dubbed the “Veterans Art Project,” is a series of five huge paintings by master painter and muralist Charles Kapsner of Little Falls. Three of the paintings have been completed since Kapsner began the project about six years ago. Two remain to be done.
The first of the paintings, in ingeniously iconic visual ways, salute the contributions of Army soldiers; the second is an evocation of Navy personnel; the third – just recently completed in February – is a tribute to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The two remaining ones will honor the Marine Corps and the Air Force.
So far, Kapsner has worked about 40 “stories” into the paintings. Each figure, mostly modeled from people posing for the artist, has a dramatic or symbolic meaning, and the groups of figures and their relationships as seen on the painted canvas also are brimming with meanings.
Each painting is like a collage of groups of human beings – military personnel, both men and women – in vast dream-like landscapes. Each painting, about 8 feet by 10 feet, is heroic in scale and dimension, fitting for the heroism they celebrate.
As the paintings are completed, they are affixed to the walls of Committal Hall at the Minnesota State Veterans Cemetery just north of Little Falls’ Camp Ripley.
One of the men who modeled for one of the paintings is Gordon Gerling of Little Falls who served in the Minnesota House as a representative from 1957-58 and again in 1961-66. Gerling is the one who suggested the Veterans Art Project some years ago to Kapsner and others. Gerling, who is now 94, a retired insurance agent, served in the U.S. Air Force as a B-24 bombardier in the North Pacific during World War II.
In suggesting the series, Gerling said to Kapsner that the great American patriot and pamphleteer Thomas Paine should be featured in one of the works. Author of the pamphlet Common Sense, Paine spoke plainly to the “common man” of his day, circa 1776, and his stirring words help foment the American revolution against Britain.
In his first painting, Kapsner painted Thomas Paine talking to a lieutenant-colonel in the Colonial Continental Army, a painted figure whose head is modeled on sketches Kapsner made of Gerling.
Another man instrumental in Kapsners’s creative process was Ray Stumpf, a Navy veteran and middle school teacher, also of Little Falls, who became good friends with Kapsner when Kapsner asked him to do hours of posing for a key figure in his Navy painting. Sadly, during his friendship with Kapsner, Stumpf was suffering from cancer, and he died from it at the age of 57 in 2013.
Yet another man rallying behind Kapsner’s paintings is Phil Ringstrom of Sartell, a committee member for the project.
The official name of Kapsner’s masterpiece series is “Looking to the Past, Present and Future: A Veterans’ Educational Historic Project.” It features military personnel all the way back to American’s founding, 1775 and to the present era.
The cost of the project is almost half a million dollars, raised through donations and grants.
Kapsner, whose father was a World War II veteran, put his heart and soul into the five-painting tour de force. His long artistic adventure took him many miles of traveling to this place and that, doing meticulous historical research, right down to the uniforms, the medals, the ribbons of the soldiers. Each painting is like an intricate, interlocking allegory whose historical meanings and social nuances emerge with each repeated viewing.
Kapsner did thousands of sketches and preparatory paintings to bring artistic brio and historical exactitude to each of the paintings.
The cemetery north of Little Falls, which opened in 1994, is the resting place for more than 1,500 veterans and eligible family members. Inside Committal Hall at the cemetery, Kapsner’s masterful tribute paintings give testament to the many generations of veterans who made and who kept America the great, free nation that it is.
Charles Kapsner paints his artist’s signature on his recently completed painting honoring the U.S. Coast Guard. It is one of a series of five paintings honoring America’s veterans. Kapsner is a Little Falls resident well known for his large, stunning murals and fresco-painting.
Artist Charles Kapsner stands before one of his paintings and a reproduction of it at the right. The painting, one of a series of five, is a visual tribute to the U.S. Coast Guard. His other paintings honor the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. Upcoming paintings will salute the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Air Force.
