Vineyard artist Cindy Kane will discuss her new internationally traveling exhibition — which combines art and journalism in a unique installation — in a free talk Thursday, August 28 at 5:00 p.m. at the Aquinnah library.

In this show, 50 steel helmets hang from the ceiling just below eye level in the configuration of a spiral. They are spaced far enough apart for a person to walk through the spiral and examine them intimately. Each helmet is covered with the original handwritten notes of foreign correspondents. The text is partially legible beneath the painted maps and other iconography, but the legibility is not as important as the authenticity of the notes, which in some cases have been saved for decades by the journalists who wrote them.

The helmets have been used in battles, and the journalists’ notes record the despair of people trapped by war, poverty and political oppression. Yet ultimately the spiral encircles the visitor in the journalists’ quests for truth, honoring their ability to bring us stories from embattled places on the earth.