Angelia Wimbley has dabbled in many forms of art. She loves painting, whether it’s on canvas or the walls of her home, and has recently picked up woodburning.
Some of her works are on display at Indy Art Center in Broad Ripple as part of the Military Community Creations exhibit, running through Dec. 14. It’s a collection of artwork by veterans, military family members and people who work for Veterans Affairs.
If you go
Indy Art Center Winter Exhibition Series
🗓️ Through Dec. 14, 2025
📍 Indy Art Center, 820 E 67th St.
🎟️ Free
In addition to Military Community Creations, there are solo shows by Bryana Bibbs, Abby Dennis and Sonnie Laviolette, and the Ivy Tech Community College student show “Constructed Nature” and a “Back Home Again” by the 67th Street Printmakers Guild. Learn more.
Wimbley served in the U.S. Air Force from 1985-89, including a deployment in England. After transitioning to civilian life, she found that she had a hard time connecting with others.
“My tendency to isolate was very high,” she said. “I wouldn’t see people, go places or interact with people I didn’t feel safe with.”
In art classes geared towards veterans, she found a community of creatives who understand the environment of the military and are sensitive to the needs of vets who have post-traumatic stress disorder.
She took part in Indy Art Center’s ArtTroop program, which is a free 10-week program for veterans to explore the visual arts. That’s where Wimbley met some of her best friends: Kent, Jeanine and Dawn.
Kent talked about fly fishing as an art form, and convinced all of them to check it out. Together, they joined a fly fishing group for veterans called Project Healing Waters. They learned not only how to fish, but also how to make their own nets and fishing rods.
Wimbley, with her artist’s eye, saw an opportunity to “snazz up” her equipment to bring a feminine touch to a male-dominated hobby. She painted and woodburned designs into her fishing rods and net, then built a stand to display them in.
The resulting works, “Fly Girl” and “Angler Outlaw,” are part of the Military Community Creations exhibit. They also won first place in two categories in the regional Veterans Creative Arts Festival.
“Art is trauma healing,” she said. “I love being able to bring it to a place and show it and say, ‘Hey, I’ve been through stuff and this has helped me.’”
The power of crayons and paper
For Gaylie Cotton, who served five years in the U.S. Air Force, art came into her life at just the right time.
“I was at my rope’s end at a VA pain clinic,” she recalled. “I walked in and said, ‘If I don’t get some help, I’m not going to make it.’”
She started art therapy immediately, first one-on-one with a therapist, and then with a group.
“That’s where I found the power of crayons and paper to release stress from the body,” she said.
Cotton said she is at a point in her life when she’s questioning everything. Her two pieces in the Military Community Creations exhibit grapple with her relationship with religion.
UPCOMING EVENT
Veterans Art Day
🗓️ 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nov. 8
📍 Indy Art Center, 820 E 67th St.
🎟️ Free for veterans, service members, military family members and caregivers. Registration required.
You can sign up for one morning workshop and one afternoon workshop, with a free lunch buffet between.
“Art has been a release for me. It gets my feelings and thoughts out and manifests them into something I can touch.”
— Gaylie Cotton, U.S. Air Force veteran and artist
In “MilkBlood: A Black Woman Ancestral Shrine,” a Black woman’s mouth is bound with cloth and a silver cross, representing the stifling of forced Christianity. A cotton wreath on her head represents the labor of slavery; it’s woven with lavender, wheat and herbs to signify the labor of healing and life. The red in her hair is pain, and the silver is wisdom.
Cotton said making these pieces was part of her effort to reimagine God as an ancestor — a Black woman sitting on a porch, shelling beans.
“Art has been a release for me,” she said. “It gets my feelings and thoughts out and manifests them into something I can touch.”
Kristi Gmutza, an art therapist with the VA, worked with Cotton while she was in crisis. She said that art, music and writing are all forms of expression that offer veterans more distance and richness than talking.
“I find they can say quite a bit more with artwork that is harder to speak,” she said.
With individual therapy, “art is almost like a third person in the room,” she said. The therapist is communicating with the veteran, the veteran’s communicating with the art, and the art is saying something back to both of them.
From artmaking to finding community
After spending much of his life living abroad, Mark Curry found that he didn’t have as much of a social network as he would have liked now that he is “semi-retired.”
He grew up Columbus, Indiana, enlisted at age 19 and served four years in the U.S. Air Force, then spent two years in the Peace Corps. After he got married, his wife’s work as a diplomat took them to several more countries around the world.
“I felt like I had a story to tell, and the more skills I pick up, the better I can tell it.”
— Mark Curry, U.S. Air Force veteran and artist
That’s part of why he started taking classes with the Armed Services Arts Program and Indy Art Center’s ArtTroop program.
“It’s the community that’s important for me,” he said. “Spending time with other vets and artists makes my life better.”
The art pieces Curry is showing in the Military Community Creations show are digital photo collages. He creates them by layering textures from photos he has taken throughout his career as a photographer.
He’s also experimenting with other art forms, like storytelling and painting.
“I felt like I had a story to tell, and the more skills I pick up, the better I can tell it,” he said.
For Michael “Blue” Jones, who served as a helicopter dispatch medic for the U.S. Army, community came through paying it forward.
He started painting in a VA art class at age 47, after a serious spine injury.
“By getting lost in the process, it eases the pain in my body. It clears my mind,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter what you create. The therapy is in the process.”
— Michael “Blue” Jones, U.S. Army veteran and artist
Now, he teaches that same class at the VA. He wants to show people that they have the power to physically change themselves by creating something.
“It doesn’t matter what you create. The therapy is in the process,” he said.
Is there a veteran in your life?
Indy Art Center’s annual Veterans Art Day is Nov. 8, with 24 free art workshops for veterans, their families and caregivers. Registration is required, and classes do fill up — you can see the full list and register online.
As of when we published this, there’s still space in workshops for metalworking, stained glass, embroidery and ceramics. Plus, new this year are classes for improv and storytelling, offered in collaboration with ASAP.
Applications for the next ArtTroop session will open soon, and tuition assistance is available for veterans to take other classes at Indy Art Center. Get in touch with Becca Nisenbaum at Indy Art Center, bnisenbaum@indyartcenter.org, to learn more.
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Gwen Ragno is Mirror Indy’s web producer who also writes about art sometimes. You can reach her at gwen.ragno@mirrorindy.org.
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