PACAF shows off its heritage

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Chris Vadnais
  • Air Force News Agency
HONOLULU (AFPN) --  Pacific Air Forces historians arranged for more than fifty works from the U.S. Air Force Art Collection to be on display here this week. The exhibit, featuring paintings pertaining to the Pacific theater rarely seen outside air bases or the Pentagon, was open to the public as part of Air Force Week Honolulu.

Air Force Week's theme, Heritage to Horizons, seemed to beg for an exhibit like this, and the Hale Koa Hotel in Waikiki was the perfect place for it.

Civilians and military members strolled through the exhibit, taking in the sights of decades of Air Power.

The collection featured works documenting even more than the Air Force's 60 years: Portraits ranged from Thomas Segar's "Hell in Paradise," which depicts the 1941 Japanese raid on Hickam Field, to Keith Ferris's "Waikiki Sunrise," which celebrates last year's arrival of Hickam Air Force Base's first C-17 Globemaster III.

For Mr. Ferris, one of the Air Force collection's best-known and most prolific artists, 60 is an extra special number.

"It was 60 years ago in August that I had my first aviation art job, and it was an Air Force publications unit," he said. "So my art career spans exactly the same years as the Air Force."

"Also," he said, "I have 59 paintings in the Air Force collection, and I'm going to finish one more this year so that I have 60--one for each year.

Mr. Ferris attended the exhibit, as did three of the other featured Air Force artists. Though they aren't uniformed Airmen, they do have a great deal of firsthand knowledge about the things they paint.

"These artists have deployed and are deploying into harm's way," said Timothy Keck, PACAF's Command Historian.

"They've been to Iraq, they've been to Afghanistan, we had them out here right after 9/11, and they were out here in Indonesia, in Thailand and on carriers, so they don't just sit back and paint--they're actively engaged in participating in our history as they record it," he said.

The exhibit included four of Mr. Ferris's works, but he spent most of his time looking at the work of his colleagues, commenting on the quality of the work and pointing out fine details, as only an artist could.

His 60th painting--the one he's currently working on--will depict the T-37 Tweet. That aircraft will be retiring early next year, but there's no telling how long Mr. Ferris will continue to paint.

"That's one of the best things about being an artist," said Mr. Ferris. "After we're gone, you can still see what we did."