William Russel Webner ’11 had an eventful summer, thanks to his receiving the Weitzel Barber Art Travel Prize. This Vassar grant provides juniors and seniors in the Art Department the opportunity to travel to study original works of art abroad; Webner opted to travel to Vietnam. One of Webner’s pieces, “521,” is a painting based on the design of an old U.S. Army helicopter Webner found there. It that remains in Vietnam outside of the Reunification Palace, the site where a North Vietnamese tank famously crashed through the gates during the fall of Saigon.

“In Vietnam, they really let you get up close to everything,” said Webner. “I first traced the helicopter, then made this painting.”

According to Webner, an untitled piece of his on display in the art gallery is also inspired by Vietnam. The painting shows a grid of squares, each with the name of a different U.S. city in the middle. The western-most cities start in the upper left corner, and the eastern-most cities are found in the lower-right. “There [in Vietnam], everything is on a North-South axis, which made me think about America, which is on a West to East axis, ” he said.

“The painting is more about the cities that aren’t on it-like my hometown, Columbus, Ohio, than the ones that are,” added Webner. “It’s done in a playful way, though.”

The colors Webner used were colors of sports teams commonly associated with those cities, or colors that he thought were appropriate. “For [Washington] D.C., I chose black and white, which is kind of sarcastic.”