LONDON – At first glance, it looks like the partial remains of an ancient mosaic or the garble of an out-of-order digital billboard. Then the scale of the work grabs your attention: It sprawls across three walls of a gallery in London’s trendy Chelsea district, stretching more than 40 yards.

Like many works of art, the totality of “American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan (but not Including the Wounded, nor the Iraqis nor the Afghanis),” is revealed by standing back. But in Emily Prince’s installation each tiny piece of the mosaic is an artwork in itself – 5,158 portraits that chronicle the men and women of the American armed forces who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

Peter Jeary/ NBC News

The art installation at the Saatchi Gallery.

Each portrait, on a piece of card four inches by three inches, has been rendered by Prince from photographs used in on-line obituaries. Where no portrait was available, a blank white card with a name is used instead. The portraits are pencil sketches, with the cards themselves color-coded to depict the racial diversity of the fallen: light brown, dark brown, yellow, off-white. Some of the cards contain brief biographical details of the subject, others just carry their name, hometown, age and the date they died.

…(read more)

LONDON – At first glance, it looks like the partial remains of an ancient mosaic or the garble of an out-of-order digital billboard. Then the scale of the work grabs your attention: It sprawls across three walls of a gallery in London’s trendy Chelsea district, stretching more than 40 yards.

Like many works of art, the totality of “American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan (but not Including the Wounded, nor the Iraqis nor the Afghanis),” is revealed by standing back. But in Emily Prince’s installation each tiny piece of the mosaic is an artwork in itself – 5,158 portraits that chronicle the men and women of the American armed forces who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

Peter Jeary/ NBC News

The art installation at the Saatchi Gallery.

Each portrait, on a piece of card four inches by three inches, has been rendered by Prince from photographs used in on-line obituaries. Where no portrait was available, a blank white card with a name is used instead. The portraits are pencil sketches, with the cards themselves color-coded to depict the racial diversity of the fallen: light brown, dark brown, yellow, off-white. Some of the cards contain brief biographical details of the subject, others just carry their name, hometown, age and the date they died.

…(read more)

By Bill Dedman, msnbc.com

NEW YORK — Ramon Crespo isn’t leaving Port-au-Prince. Though the dozen children from the Rescue Children orphanage are safe in the countryside, he and six other men from his Pennsylvania church remain behind, helping their neighbors with food, water, medicine and shelter.

The small group plans to stay for at least another two weeks, said Randy Landis, the senior pastor of Lifechurch in Allentown, Pa. The church volunteers went down after the earthquake to safeguard the children they were responsible for. Most of the group is now back in the States.

But no help has arrived for their neighbors in the Santo neighborhood, one mile northeast of the airport in Port-au-Prince. So the intense Crespo, director of missions for the church, has stayed behind, setting up a distribution system for families living under tents.

“We’re building little shelters,” Landis said. “The U.N. gave us tarps, and we found a store with 2-by-4s. You can see blue tarps up all around the neighborhood.”

…(read more)