CHICAGO – The fallen Iraqi soldier’s face is frozen in agony, his eyes and mouth wide open, his arms spread in surrender, his death in the Kuwaiti desert captured for posterity.

The sculpture’s title: “Angel in the Desert.”

Marcus Eriksen was a young Marine sergeant during the Gulf War, riding with a convoy to Kuwait City, when he encountered the Iraqi soldier. It was the first dead body he’d seen. The image was haunting, the experience unforgettable. But it took more than a decade before he started welding the memory into art.