In Memoriam: Bruno "Pete" Peters

In July a great man departed this mortal time and space, and left the company of devoted family and friends. He passed on just eight weeks short of his one-hundred-first birthday. I considered him a dear friend, and during the all-too-brief time I knew him he allowed me the privilege of rendering two portraits his likeness. I would like to honor his memory in this post.

He was Lieutenant Colonel Bruno Peters, U.S. Army Air Corps, (Ret). I met him and his wife Patti in 2004, through their daughter, my friend Mohini Wendy Peters.

Pete and Patti were always warm and welcoming to me from the day I met them in Torrance, California. When I first spoke with Patti and referred to her husband as “Mr. Peters”, she immediately corrected me, “Pete”. Since then I always felt welcome in their presence.

The portraits portray him at stages in his life exactly seventy years apart.

In The Quiet Man (1) I envisioned him as the twenty-seven year old fighter pilot, Captain Bruno Peters, flight leader of 355th Squadron.

In The Quiet Man (2), he’s just Pete as I knew him, still blowing notes on his saxophone. I painted this as a gift for his ninety-seventh birthday.

He flew (and crashed) all kinds of fighter aircraft during World War II, and piloted transport planes during the Korean War.

However, he was most renowned as an aviator with the 354th Fighter Group, 9th Air Force -- the Pioneer Mustangs, the first unit to fly the renowned North American P-51, in both their B and D models.

I was privileged to attend a couple of veterans’ reunions of the 354th. It was obvious that he was held in high regard by everyone, as a pilot and as a man.

Although much has been said and written about his heroism as an aviator – all of it well-deserved -- I was always most impressed by his humility.

During the time I was taking night classes while working full time, I was assigned the writing of an essay and then to speak about its topic before a live audience. My choice of topic then was what’s been referred to as “The Greatest Generation”. This included interviews with Pete regarding his WWII experiences. He was reluctant to make much of them. To him, he was just doing his job. He seemed to have more enjoyment recounting the times he had crashed various of his planes in non-combat situations, than recounting experiences in actual combat.

I loved his saying that “all I ever wanted to do was fly airplanes and play in the band”.

I've excerpted portions of his obituary below:

"...Bruno was born on September 12, 1917 in Minneapolis, MN, to Bernice Dabravalskiai and Alexander Petraitis. Bruno was the oldest of five children. His father and mother emigrated from Lithuania, in 1906 and 1913, respectively. The family settled in the Detroit, Michigan area where Alexander worked for Ford Motor Company. Bruno became an accomplished violin musician at an early age and often performed with his father at Lithuanian celebrations. Bruno left home at the age of 14, and graduated from High School in Royal Oak, Michigan.He joined the Army Air Corp during World War II. He flew more than 100 missions in the P51 Mustang, out of England and France with the Pioneer Mustang Group. Most of his missions involved escorting bombers to and from their targets. He is credited for downing one of the first German jets, the ME262. During the war, he took up the saxophone, which he played for most of his life. After the war he continued his career in the Air Force and retired as Lt. Colonel in 1968.Bruno met and married Patti Helen Ruth Moore (April 29, 1926 – July 29, 2010) on August 22, 1944. Due to his career in the Air Force, the family moved all over the United States, and also lived in France for 3 years. After retiring from the Air Force, Bruno and Patti settled in Phoenix, AZ where he worked for the Gannett Newspaper. During that time, Bruno and Patti enjoyed antiquing together, and acquired hundreds of collectables. Bruno led the Pete Peters Swing Band, playing for special events and for fun. He and Patti enjoyed traveling and went to many reunions of the 354th Fighter Pilot Group.In 1997 they moved to Torrance, California. Shortly after the death of his wife Patti, in 2010, Bruno bought a home in Santa Cruz where he lived with his daughter, Wendy, until his death..."

The photo below is from last September, 2017 when we celebrated him at his 100th birthday.

Photo Courtesy of Ken Peters

The obituary credits him with shooting down an ME262A. However, it's probable that he actually took down a second, an ME262-1, though it was not officially confirmed. His wingman, Lt. Ralph Delgado took down a third -- totaling three ME262s in the area of Fulda and south of Kassel region of central Germany.

There are many books on the exploits of the Pioneer Mustangs, which were the first to fly the P-51D, the bubble canopy Mustang that had the engine power and fuel capacity to escort and defend bombers all the way to the Third Reich’s territory. The acclaimed Redtails of the 332nd Fighter Group -- the Tuskegee Airmen -- were P-51Ds as well.

The most succinct and inexpensive book I'd recommend to the casual reader is An Ordinary Day in 1945, by Peter Kǎǎsák. With photos and illustrations it tells of all the action seen by the 8th and 9th Air Force during one day, March 2, 1945. That was the day that Capt. Peters and his wingman Lt. Delgado took down the ME262s. (Barely six months later, Bruno would marry his beloved Patti.) A Google search on "Bruno Peters" would produce many excerpts on him, and more vintage fighter pilot photos as well. You can see Bruno Peters and hear him speak on a YouTube video from a series on the 354th FG. Even as he speaks of his experiences, his humility and self-deprecating humor are clearly evident.

His memorial was held this July 28th, 2018, which I attended. I spoke of him fondly as I do now, but it was difficult holding it all in. In the early evening, we boarded a whale-watching boat out of Capitola for his burial at sea amidst the dolphins. Mohini’s brother Ken released into the waves an eco-friendly urn in the shape of a sea turtle containing Bruno's ashes and those of his wife Patti. We cast yellow roses in the wake.

There’s much more -- a whole lot more that could be said about him – his quiet valor, kindness and wry humor… It’s certain many will speak of him for some time to come. In closing, though, I’d include in my personal remembrance his big-hearted generosity.

"Father and Children" Watercolor Process Video

Now, more than ever, we need examples and models of sensitive, nurturing good men to contradict the culture of patriarchy. I created a watercolor painting to celebrate kind and aware fathers, and the children they help raise as the hope of our civilization.

This process video was the first that I ever created for Instagram; and the first video I've created in a long time of any kind. 37 seconds of footage literally took me all day to composite. As I get better at it there will be more created, of better quality and appearing faster and more regularly. (Created 4/22/2018) 

Comic Art: Not Just For Your Kids Anymore

Over the past year, besides going back to reading the classics of comic art or discovering new ones, I've been doing research on all aspects of how comic art is actually made. I've been exploring what it might take to parlay my fictional writing (and true life experiences) into a socially aware graphic novel "Extreme Dreams". For those of you who haven't read comic books since childhood, comic art is a serious art form. Graphic novels have won the Pulitzer prize. Doctoral theses have been presented using the graphic novel medium.

Extreme Dreams is about a socially un-aware man with unreliable psychic abilities (which we all have, more or less). He's introverted, surly and harbors many of typically male sexist and homophobic attitudes, if not overtly. Tragic events force him to seek out unlikely allies and re-examine his life in order to unravel their source.

(This is my first attempt at a three-sentence elevator pitch. How am I doing?) At a comic con workshop last year, one piece of advice I received from comic artists Ryan Sook and Alex Sheikman was that even if I primarily wanted to write comic scripts, publishers ultimately want to see visual examples of my concepts, i.e., even if I had to rope other artists into doing that part of the work, we'd still have to be able to present hard copy visual comic art.Problem, though. I've never actually drawn comic art; and as of October 2017, except for a few timid and tepid doodles done on the sly during my day job conference calls, I hadn't done any real ink drawing in seventeen years. Long story behind that one -- involved a woman, as so many stories do. Tell you another time; or maybe not.So, I decided to perform an experiment: during the month of October (roughly), I participated in "Inktober". For those of you who aren't familiar, Inktober is an artistic challenge originated by Jake Parker eight years ago in which thousands of creatives around the world now participate. Thirty-one days in October, in which to make thirty-one pieces of art using only ink. There are "official" prompts one can use; or one can just wing it. Hey, we're artists -- we don't follow no stinkin' rules.I began to post drawings on my Instagram, with the intention of completing thirty-one ink drawings – with the added commitment to make them in a comic art “style”.Now into the second week of November, I've just completed "Day 31". Life -- which “happens when you're busy making other plans” -- intervened many times, plus realizing that not all of these drawings could be done as quick-and-dirty as I thought they could be. Once I actually began to post drawings, it just didn't feel like part of my commitment to simply submit a five-minute doodle; so, I lost a lot of sleep around this, and dishes piled up unwashed in the sink for days at a time. (Well, OK, some truth-telling here: I'm living a bachelor's existence. The dishes pile up, inktober or no.)Thirty drawings constitute a kind of storyboard for what may eventually evolve into a graphic novel. I say "might", because as any of you who actually have more experience in doing comic art know, it's a hellofalot of work to research, write, compose, pencil draw line art, ink, color and letter comic art -- not to even mention publishing and maybe, just maybe, make money off them.Maybe when I retire from my day job in two year? Six years? Maybe I can't/don't want to do it all by myself, and instead find collaborators? Maybe crowd fund a graphic novel? Who the hell knows what may come of it, if anything. If you get a winning lottery ticket, keep me in mind, please.For me the point of Inktober was to finally get started doing something -- anything -- with ink and with comic art. 

Though I want all of my artwork generally to express social awareness -- and I believe my new comic art falls within that criteria -- not all of it necessarily fit in the context of this website. I'll post it here whenever it does. (One of these -- #20 in the Instagram posts, but which I've since titled Time Traveler) is actually hanging in the Walter Lee Avery Gallery now through December 13, 2017 as part of the Fall Adult Competitive exhibition.) For the moment you'll need to go to my Instagram.com/emcorpus to see the entire series. They're in the order of most recent to older posts; so you'll have to work your way back to #1 and go forward.Remember, I'm totally new to this; so please be kind (if you can manage being kind -- but if not, I can take it, being a Boomer and now having entered the ranks of the old guys. Old guys rule.)I'll have more to say about these subjects; but I also invite your comments and discussion.

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Why My Art Is ‘Subversive’ -- and How That Matters to You

In recent times, I’ve chosen to characterize my visual and literary practice as “culturally subversive art”.Merriam-Webster defines subversion as “a systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system.” To subvert is “to overturn or overthrow from the foundation, ruin, by persons working secretly from within”. Ooh! Or, how about this? “…to pervert or corrupt by an undermining of morals, allegiance, or faith”. 

Merriam-Webster defines subversion as “a systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system.” To subvert is “to overturn or overthrow from the foundation, ruin, by persons working secretly from within”...“…to pervert or corrupt by an undermining of morals, allegiance, or faith” 

This word carries something of an emotional charge. Sounds dangerously anti-social and unwholesome, doesn’t it? Maybe even criminal.“Why do you call your artwork ‘subversive’?” I’ve been asked, often with dubious looks of dismay, or uneasy amusement.I’ve set for myself an ambitious task in my own modest way of ambition -- to overthrow, undermine, overturn, ruin, pervert, corrupt and undermine a centuries-old social paradigm, and the attitudes, beliefs and social practices that attend to it. 

So, what’s this social paradigm on which I’ve tilted my lance point?Its current model is what sociologist and historian Riane Eisler calls the dominator society, as opposed to a partnership society.*It’s a patriarchal society where attitudes and practices of domination, control and winning at any and all costs pre-dominate.Does this sound familiar to you? It’s a paradigm where violence – overwhelmingly male violence -- is implicit, passed forward from generation to generation as a socially sanctioned blood curse.Let me make this dominator society more concrete for you, if it isn’t already: inequality in socio-economic, ethnic, gender, age and racial forms, bullying in our schools, campus rape, physical and emotional abuse in our families…So, this is a clue for you.While running a thread of subversion through my artworks, I try to avoid being didactic and preachy. My intention is to create art with a social conscience, not propaganda. Notwithstanding Master Yoda on “trying” versus “do or not do”, I have no illusion that I’ll always succeed.

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Illustration by Gustave Doré of Don Quixote Tilting At WindmillsCervantes, Miguel. The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha

Neither do I think that every piece I create needs to be grim with the weight of its perceived mission of cultural revolution. There’s much in our world over which to feel angry and despondent. Feeling angry all the time, however, or being around angry people all the time, gets tiresome.In fact, whimsy and humor is often the best way to point out the absurd and ridiculous ways that attitudes of “win” “dominate” and “conquer” at any cost often manifest in everyday life and popular culture, from sports to entertainment to business to sexual relationships.Sometimes, I just like being contrary to convention. It can be fun (though I run the risk of indulging my darker passive-aggressive side with this.) 

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As an Asian-American male now almost four years into the sixth decade of my life (all of which presents their own sets of challenges), I continue to subvert the remnants of my own attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, prejudices and social practices as I determine these are no longer congruent to leading a life with deep, intimate, more fulfilling relationships. Shaking or even kicking over the shit bucket is one of the best ways to shake myself up.I’d much rather laugh at myself than beat myself up, though. There was too much of the latter in my life, literally. It would be cool if I could get you laughing, too. Maybe you might find some of my art funny.

Admittedly, as with political and military subversion, there are risks, costs and penalties to being a cultural subversive – even meeting with violence at one extreme, but often also condemnation to social isolation and ostracism.I’m of the opinion that much of what has become the popular image of the “insane” artist derives from creative individuals being driven to insanity by isolation for being “different”. (Be-on-the-lookout for a blog post – or rant – from me on this topic.) No wonder Merriam-Webster states that subversion is done “by persons working secretly from within”.Let me conclude by introducing one more charged word: For a subversive to organize or solicit others to subversion is called conspiracy.I actually find conspiracy to be a lovely word. Its Latin roots “con spire” literally mean “to breathe together”. When people act in conjunction with each other to do good things, however, another word that can define this kind of breathing together is partnership.

I actually find conspiracy to be a lovely word.Its Latin roots “con spire” literally mean “to breathe together”.

While we might at times have to “work secretly from within” for operational security, the best kind of conspiring is done out in the open, inclusive of greater and greater numbers, as opposed to exclusively for a privileged few. That partnership society is the kind of social paradigm I’m dedicated to help create through the open practice of visual art and writing.I have more to say about this “cultural subversion” concept, a lot more; and there will be more that I'll write. Art is not as removed from everyday life as some would have people believe, so as to give a justification to eliminate it from social and educational programs; and I’ll have more to say about that.To help me rope you into my conspiracy, -- and yes, I want us to conspire -- I have in the works a series of blog posts for the near future, including on one of my favorite teachers in cultural subversion, Rembrandt Van Rijn.In the meantime, your thoughts, please?

*Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.

How Male Culture Is a Culture of Violence

I believe that every human being is born a creative – whether in the making of visual images, the willful manipulation of sound as music, expressing movement of the body through space in dance, enhanced communication through the poetic use of words… The Latin words ingenium and ingeniare denote cleverness to contrive or devise. Hence even the engineer who invents and assembles structures is first and foremost born an artist.

Sadly, the creative, artistic modes of thinking and feeling are murdered or maimed beyond recognition in many people. This often takes hold as early as the age of four, and tragically far gone by adolescence. There’s an age-old sickness in our society that I seek to address, and it expresses itself as male culture.Male culture in our society (for the moment I’ll address Western male society in particular) is a rape culture, a culture of dominance, a child abusive culture -- not a culture of nurturance. Violence is hard-wired into male culture.

As a result every man is a walking time bomb. Some men explode with destructive impact on those around them—spouses, children, associates, strangers, other men. Women have far too long borne the brunt of male violence and oppression. Other men quietly implode into addiction, depression and psychogenic-induced physical illnesses, or some combination of all of the above.

It persists because it’s socially sanctioned. It’s passed on from generation-to-generation, father-to-son as a kind of social blood curse. It’s ingrained in the playground and sports field rites of passage by which boys are terrorized into becoming so-called "men". Few if any survive it whole.

I believe it need not be this way.

My intention is to contribute to healing and social transformation through an art that expresses the truth -- whether through brutal honesty or through the celebration of beauty. I’ll have much more to say regarding these matters in the coming weeks and days how this might be done. I’ll say it as graphically, repeatedly and from as many angles as I can devise, here on this blog and through other social media. But it needs to be said starting now. Won't you join me in the conversation? Won't you help me in the social transformation?

How My Artist's Journey Began -- and Almost Didn't

Why do I make art? Why do the emotional tones of my artwork range from terrifying (“Walking On the Dark Side”) to the mystic and ineffable (“Transcendent”)? Why do I want you to purchase my art and keep me producing more?

This is my first blog post in my new website, and perhaps first newsletter article. (If you signed up for my newsletter, bear with me, please. This social media and content marketing thing is still awkward and unwieldy to this 1970’s hippie. I promise you I’ll get the kinks worked out. I’ve got a ton of goodies to give you.)

I was born in the Philippines some eight years after the end of World War II. My father, a veteran of that war, preceded us in journeying back to the U.S. and paved the way for my mother and me to emigrate. When I was twenty-two months of age, she and I boarded an airplane bound for the U.S.

Between 1955 and 1958 through my fourth year of age, our first residence was in New York City in a tenement building on 4th Street in the Bowery. This section on the southeast side of Manhattan Island was known as New York’s skid row even until the 1970s. We would come home to find derelict men passed out on our doorstep, reeking of urine and cheap alcohol.

We lived in a multi-floor railroad flat, so-called as the one-room apartments on each floor were stacked end-to-end, suggesting railway cars. Each apartment door opened onto the common hallway, with one shared bathroom at the far end. My only memory of that bathroom is unfortunately best left unspoken for the time being. (Maybe one day it will wind up as a piece in the "...Dark Side" gallery.)

On the positive side of the ledger, my mother would recount over the years an occurrence taking on the air of a family legend, though I have no recall of the incident itself. What I do remember is that my mother repeated with pride to whomever would listen that I -- as a three-year-old toddler -- had drawn a large and recognizable airplane on the dresser mirror, using my mother's lipstick as a crayon.

"I -- as a three-year-old toddler -- had drawn a large and recognizable airplane on the dresser mirror, using my mother's lipstick as a crayon."

What experience would a three-year-old know of airplanes? A photograph dated July 1955 gives us a clue.

My mother stands with me in her arms on an airport tarmac. Behind her is the silvery Northwest Orient "Connie" on which we flew. Big planes can make even bigger impressions to little boys.

One person to whom she undoubtedly related this story was Mr. Gordon, our landlord. I don’t know if that lipstick airplane is something Mr. Gordon ever saw, but he did see others of my youthful drawings, and knew thereby that I loved to draw.

In the hallway outside our door was a table with a thin drawer just beneath the tabletop. I recall my mother opening our door to allow me into the hallway to open that drawer each morning. I remember anticipating with excitement if Mr. Gordon had left blank paper inside for me to draw on -- typing paper, sheets of white butcher paper, hotel stationery and the like.

Besides stoking my passion for drawing, Mr. Gordon’s kindness had a farther-reaching consequence, perhaps unconscious to him or my family. Though I have no recollection of any artistic expression prior to 4th Street, or of whatever impression it would have made on anyone, I would speculate that Mr. Gordon was the first validation of my ability outside of my immediate family.

We were the proverbial “strangers in a strange land” in 1950s America. Mr. Gordon was a Caucasian man and our apartment landlord, an authority figure in the eyes of my parents, adding to the strength of that validation.

My mother recounted the lipstick airplane incident with pride, my father not so much. He was no advocate for  the mirroring that ideally should be part of the parent-child relationship at that stage of development. Most likely he was ignorant of it. Encouraging my artistic side would not have been considered important, let alone necessity -- had not an outside authority figure given it social validation. For a toddler, drawing airplanes and street sweepers was as natural a function as breathing. Envisioning me as a future district attorney, doctor or politician did not enter my four-year-old mind as a valid future. For my father it was. Spilling things, saying the "wrong" things at the wrong time, making marks where marks did not belong -- he dealt harshly with these infractions.

I know nothing else of Mister Gordon, his personal character, his past history or what his future would be. For all I knew he could have been a WWII concentration camp guard on the lam. He was after all a slumlord -- at night in our apartment we could hear rats gnawing behind the walls. He might have later become a wealthy philanthropist, a Big Daddy Warbucks. Who knows? But for a crucial moment in time, he was an angel sent into my life to make that crucial intervention. For this I am grateful.

Mr. Gordon, you were one of those persons that the psychologist Alice Miller referred to as efficient witnesses.

Children are born creative, all of them, all over the world without exception. That assertion is a cornerstone of my belief.

Children have also been subjected to physical and emotional abuse all over the world, over many ages and times, some by war, poverty, neglect and other forms, too often of the most horrific kinds. The heartbreaking images of drowned and maimed coming out of the Mediterranean refugee crisis are now all too common, children with voices that cannot be heard.

Many break as individuals. Others grow into adulthood absorbing the legacy of abuse into their personal culture, such that they themselves become abusers -- or in tolerating it, the carriers of violence and self-violence as a kind of self-perpetuating social disease.

Others survive in despite, and even recover to become advocates for social justice -- for children, or others. Why is this? Why do some survive psychologically, and others not? And how do they survive? The psychologist Alice Miller was such an advocate.

Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd.

She coined the term enlightened witness as a person who is willing to support harmed individuals -- children most notably -- empathize and help them to gain understanding of and healing from their own biographical past. (Incidentally, late in life she fulfilled her desire to also be a painter. Her watercolor works are in print.)

As Dr. Miller noted in her studies, the damage caused in the child neurologically and emotionally sets in before the age of four years. For me, despite my initial encounters with the psychiatric world as a teen and years of introspection afterwards, my recovery did not effectively begin in this regard until relatively late in life.

Two factors that kept me going were the same two that got me started on my journey -- the creation of art, and the experience of the mystical or divine. All my life to date I’ve been on a hero's journey, these two common threads weaving through that journey.

I would extend the definition of enlightened witness to include crucial interventions of love coming from outside the immediate family environment that recognize and reinforce a child’s sense of what is precious and unique about his or her own humanity. That person -- the efficient witness -- through a kind word or gesture may be key in the emotional survival of the child, planting a seed for a future harvest.

Many people have shown me support and kindnesses over the years. In relation to my development as an artist as relates to my childhood I now pay tribute to one of the first efficient witnesses in my life.

Thank you, Mister Gordon, wherever you are in the universe now. In my own way, through my art, my writing and the process of bettering myself each day, I’m finding ways to leave paper where it’s needed.

Okay, that’s it for now. How did I do with my first blog post? I invite you to please comment below, or email me privately. Many more to come.