Rough Artist's Rendition of a PeaceWork

This from The Hill

Increased penalties on straw purchases of guns sailed through the Senate Judiciary Committee and looked like a safe bet to win Senate approval even as other provisions — including the expanded background checks that remain a goal for gun control supporters — ran into trouble. 

Now the straw-purchasing bill could be in danger because of NRA demands to change the language so law enforcement officials would have to prove that a straw purchaser intended to commit a crime or further the commission of a crime by buying a gun for someone else.

Unbelievable.

18 Year Old Eagle Scout Builds Peace Garden

I just finished reading an article in the NYTimes Magazine titled "That Other School Shooting" about a mass shooting at Oikos University in Oakland, California in April of last year.  The article touches on many things, not the least being the fact that very few people have even heard of the shooting.  Certainly not in comparison to Newtown, Va Tech, Columbine.

But what really caught me was a few paragraphs describing a young man named Kinsa Durst.  Mr. Durst, as part of an Eagle Scout project, built a Peace Garden on the campus of Oikos University.  Both Mr. Durst and the shooter, One L. Goh, are Korean.  So is the author of the piece, Jay Caspian Kang.  Mr. Kang explains Mr. Durst's motivations:

He said he built the gardens to help bridge the gap between Koreans and Americans in the Bay Area. When I asked him what he meant by that, Durst, who is half-Korean and speaks the language fluently, said he worried that the shooting portrayed Koreans in a negative light. “I wanted to show we’re not all the same,” he explained. I pointed out that none of the local or national news media had run a story about a rash of violent Koreans and wondered where he might have heard such talk. Durst said: “Well, there was also Virginia Tech, and now there have been two shooters who were Korean. The school wasn’t getting much support because of people’s bad perceptions, so I wanted to come and help.”

Pretty amazing kid.

Newtown, Three Months After

I cut this blurb from the Daily Beast ...

Three months after Adam Lanza opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, President Obama spoke Thursday at the White House, pushing for stricter gun legislation to protect our children. “I don’t think any of us who are parents can hear these stories and not think of our own daughters, our own sons,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we’ve forgotten.” Obama defended the legislation laid out by Vice President Joe Biden, insisting that it is “consistent with the Second Amendment” and will not “infringe” on the rights of gun owners. “Tears aren’t enough, speeches aren’t enough. We’ve cried enough,” he said. “Now is the time to turn that heartbreak into something real.”

In the past several days I've had some excellent meetings with Troy City government, and I'm feeling better and better about being able to make the first PeaceWork actually happen in Troy.

Which would be the very definition of turning "that heartbreak into something real."

Bloomberg Initiates Campaign/NRA Responds

Speaking as a member, I can tell you the National Rifle Association is an out-of-control organization, comprised of millions of perfectly rational gun owners and sportsmen who favor stricter reporting and background checks and the banning of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, but which is led by extremists.

None of this should be surprising to you, but a quote from NRA lobbyist Chris Cox in a recent New York Times article about Mayor Bloomberg's planned media blitz in support of Federal regulations to curb gun violence applies to The PeaceWorks Project.

“What he is going to find out is that Americans don’t want to be told by some elitist billionaire what they can eat, drink and they damn well don’t want to be told how, when and where they can protect their families,” Mr. Cox said.

On some level, the quote is standard attack-dog lobbyist populism.  On a deeper level it's a little sad.

Mr. Bloomberg responded by saying (referring to background checks, etc.),  "These ideas shouldn't be controversial."

But they are.  For good or for bad.  And encouraging that discussion is what The Project is all about.

Next week is full of meetings

Lots of pushing has resulted in a spate of upcoming get togethers related to the Project.  We'll have a significantly better sense of our progress after that.

The Municipal Gears Grind Slowly

I see some progress.

As I noted before, naming names is almost certainly more counterproductive at this stage of the process than productive.  Nonetheless, I see some progress, not just here but in the city of Albany as well.

I remain hopeful that PeaceWork #1 will happen in Troy (if for no other reason than that I'll be able to walk by it every day and say, 'Wow, who would have thought?'), but it's also prudent to be pursuing other municipalities at the same time.

Officially Now a Movement

Somebody emailed me this:

Message: This is so timely. I am part of the XXX peace coalition and we met tonight and were asking ourselves, "how do we as a peace community "respond" to all of this gun violence?". I am not good with words, but the visual you depict is chilling and I am curious, want more information and insight from you on the creation/reaction you have witnessed. 

thank you for leading this with an artistic voice!

Whenever I post an email like this I delete any identifying features in the text.  The XXX refers to a western state.  The email is lovely, but what makes it amazing is that it came out of the blue from so far away.  Amazing is the wrong word, given the power of the internet, but still, given that at this point I've not really gone "public" in a committed way, it is quite something.

Maya Lin's inspirational work, and a reader's comment

Maya Lin burst onto the art scene when she won the competition to create the Vietnam Veterans' War Memorial in Washington DC.  My draft number was 303, so I didn't have to go to Vietnam.  Nonetheless, I find it extraordinary.

But my favorite work of hers is this:

Called "Storm King Earthworks", it is installed in the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York.

A similar photograph of this extraordinary work is seen at the top of each page of the PeaceWorks Project website.

A visitor to the site wrote me with this:

"I love your use of Maya Lin's very moving work.  Art should be about dialogue, and Lin's work (at least as explained through your eyes) seems to be about a dialogue between the living and the dead.  As if to say 'We acknowledge your passing.  And we'll do everything in our power to keep others from suffering the same fate.'
"If your PeaceWorks can foster a dialogue like that, they will have served a very important purpose.  Best of luck."

The most wanted gun in America

This is the headline from an article in the New York Times today by Natasha Singer.  It starts like this:

THE phone rings again at Pasadena Pawn and Gun, and a familiar question comes down the line: “Got any ARs?”

The answer is no. Pasadena Pawn and Gun, a gun retailer and pawnshop 15 miles south of Baltimore, is pretty much sold out of America’s most wanted gun, the AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle. Since the massacre in Newtown, Conn., in December, the AR-15, the military-style weapon that the police say was used in the shootings, has been selling fast here and across the nation.

Before Newtown, the rifles sold for about $1,100, on average. Now some retailers charge twice that. At Pasadena Pawn, on the wall behind glass counters of handguns, are three dozen or so AR-15-style rifles. Dangling from nearly every one is a tag that says “Sold.”

“The AR-15, it’s kind of fashionable,” says Frank Loane Sr., the proprietor.

Read the rest here.  It's quite sobering, and it speaks directly to the challenge at hand.

The Albany Gun Show

I went to the Albany Gun Show last weekend.  Nothing was particularly surprising.  The New York State legislature had pushed through an assault weapons ban a week or so earlier, so there were no Bushmasters to be found anywhere.

The National Guard had a booth, however, and they were allowing people to handle two M-4s (each securely attached to the table with cables).  M-4s are basically the most up-to-date version of the AR-15, the design which inspired the Bushmaster and a slew of other, similar weapons.  I picked one up and it was a pretty compelling in its own way.  I can see the fascination.

It was not nearly as compelling, however, as the Holland & Holland double-barrel elephant rifle I got to handle.  When I first saw it, I thought it was a shotgun.  Closer examination showed that the barrels were way too thin for a shotgun.  It was, in fact, an elephant gun.  If you know anything about H&H, you know they're one of the premium gun manufacturers in the world.  The gun I was holding, which will be auctioned in a couple of months, was estimated at between ten and fifteen thousand dollars.  Which is a lot of gun.

The double-barreled design features two triggers and two firing mechanisms.  The theory being that, if you don't kill the animal with the first shot, you will have likely enraged it.  Moments later it will be running directly at you and the only thing standing between life and death at this point is your ability to get off a clean shot.  The last thing you want is a jam, thus the complete redundancy of barrel, hammer and trigger.

Posting Frequency

This is not one of those blogs where I post things everyday.  A project like this is typically slow on the uptake, although as we accelerate things will happen faster.

Also, a lot of what is going on now is dialogue with public and quasi-public figures.  And since I'm not trying to bust anybody's chops, these conversations are best left, by and large, unreported until something of substance happens.

So don't misconstrue a lack of updates with a lack of effort.

All that said, the Albany gun show is coming up in two weeks, and that should offer plenty to talk about.

Gun One

Gun One has arrived.

A home-made, front-loading, fairly rusty flintlock donated by Richard O. Belanger, shown here on the floor of my studio.

This was the same guy who, upon hearing about the initial rejection of my proposal by the TPD, said something along the lines of "Why even worry about the PD?  Why not just get the guns on the open market?  You can buy old, broken guns for next to nothing."

There's a certain blood-thirsty expedience to this idea, and it might be the best way to get Ball #1 underway, but I feel the message is stronger if the PeaceWork is made from confiscated criminal weapons than from donated, already non-functioning weapons.  So I'm continuing my efforts with city government (although not much gets done through the holidays), with private donations offering a parallel track.

We'll see how it goes.

Good News

If you read enough how-to-be-a-salesman books, one of the persistant themes is that a "no" is just a "yes" waiting to happen.  Or something like that.

So good news:  I just received my first no from the City of Troy.  The rational for the denial stemmed from "laws regulating the disposal of confiscated weapons, none of which allows for destruction" in the manner I'm suggesting.  That said, the letter had an extremely gracious tone and left me feeling pretty good.  After all, who really thought this would be easy?

Plus, the PeaceWorks Project just received its first named members of the Role of Donors.  Earl and Lori Hoellen of Denver, CO.

Merry Christmas.

Demolishing the damn things...

One of the essential features of The PeaceWorks Project is that the firearms used for the sculpture are absolutely incapable of ever functioning as weapons again.  You don't want people somehow prying an operational Saturday Night Special off the side of a PeaceWork (something that would be virtually impossible, regardless) and using it.  So the first rule is to render each gun permanently inoperable.

Do you ever listen to Ray LaMontagne?  There's a great couple of lines in his song "Jolene" ...

A man needs something he can hold onto
A nine-pound hammer or a woman like you
Either one of them things will do
Jolene

Not sure how Jolene feels about being objectified like this, but a nine-pound hammer figures prominently in the dismantling of the guns.  Revolvers are easy.  You hold the weapon in one hand and your nine-pound hammer in the other (this is a slight simplification) and you have at it, demolishing first the hammer mechanism then the cylinder.  As if that wasn't enough, you force epoxy resin into the rear end of the barrel.   Once that stuff dries, this weapon will never fire anything again.  Semi-automatic pistols are more or less the same thing.  Remove the slide, beat the hell out of the firing mechanism, then fill the chamber with epoxy.  Rifles need a larger hammer, since the objective is to forcibly separate the barrel from the stock, then fill it with epoxy.

All of this is done in cooperation with the local Police Department.  Then, and only then, the sculpting begins.

Donations

Donations can be made via PayPal and directed to my email (gvraymond@gmail.com) or by check to Geoffrey Raymond at The PeaceWorks Project, 5 Broadway, Suite 202A, Troy, NY 12180.

For those sending $250 or more, you will be listed in the Roll of Donors.  For those sending $2,500 or more, you will receive an original piece of art that is linked thematically to the PeaceWorks Project.

At this point, donations are not tax deductible.  But they are very much appreciated and will be put to good use.

The Origin of the Idea

I've been thinking about sculpting with firearms for a long time.  Truth be told, I'm a little ashamed it's taken me this long to actually start doing it.  A friend of mine had a son at Virginia Tech when that shooting happened.  The kids of another friend of mine went to high school less than 6 miles from Columbine.  How could that not have been motivation enough for meaningful action?

Anyway, I'm thinking back, trying to decide when I first thought up the idea.  I know it was sparked by seeing this ...

It's the huge bronze sculpture of John F. Kennedy that stands in the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.  I remember seeing it several years ago -- maybe longer -- and thinking that a similar effect to the coarse clay sculpting could be achieved by welding together some handguns.  I think I got bogged down by the challenge of trying to create a recognizable image when your smallest components are ten or twelve inches long.  The sculpture would have to be massive.  Way bigger than the 4' to 8' diameter I envision for the average PeaceWork.  So I discarded the idea at some point.

I wish I'd pursued it sooner.

Meaningful Action: Selling my Rolex

The problem with "public" art, rather than the "private" paintings I create, is that nobody is paying me for the former.  At least not at this point in the process.  And the process is expensive.  So, in the interest of putting my money where my mouth is, I'm selling my watch.

The watch is a 2009 Rolex Milgauss 116400 GV.  The GV stands for Glace Verte, or green crystal, and it comes with original box, papers, etc.  I wear it everyday and the idea of saying goodbye to it makes me a bit queasy.  You can read a bit about it here.

A watch is just a thing, and I may use the money to buy a pick-up truck (on the side of which I will attach The PeaceWorks Project logo).  What is important, I think, is the notion of sacrifice in order to fund Meaningful Action.  And that brings me to you ...

Getting the PeaceWork Project off the ground is going to be expensive.  If it was just a couple of paintings I'd just paint them and that would be the end of it.  But there are significant hard costs involved and I would very much appreciate your help.

The easiest way to contribute is to click on PayPal and send whatever you feel is appropriate to my email address:  gvraymond@gmail.com.

Thank you.

The PeaceWorks Project

Like millions around the world I was heartbroken by the events at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.  As the parent of two daughters, it still seems unimaginable that such a thing could have happened.  I was also very moved by President Obama's declaration that "meaningful action" is needed.  And while his comments were directed at the political arena, I believe we all should acknowledge this tragic loss with meaningful action.  For me, that means creating art.  More specifically, that means creating PeaceWorks.

A PeaceWork is a piece of public sculpture designed to encourage gun awareness.  I choose to leave the politics of gun control out of the mix.  I simply want to stimulate thought.  And I want my work to continue to stimulate thought long after the immediate horror of Newtown has passed.

Remember making snowmen as a kid?  You first made a snowball with your hands, then rolled it around the yard, patting the snow down tight, until it was the size of a beach-ball.  Then you made another one.  And so on.  PeaceWorks are much the same thing, except that instead of snow they are made from the disabled Colts, Glocks, Smith & Wessons, Bushmasters, AK-47s and other assorted weaponry obtained from local police departments.  The result is a large spherical sculpture made out of disabled guns and sealed with polymer resin.  A PeaceWork.

On a regular basis, every police department in the country disposes of confiscated firearms that are no longer useful as evidence.  Usually they are transferred to a contractor which then melts them down and recycles the raw materials for other purposes.  The PeaceWork Project will replace smelting as a more societally productive way of recycling the firearms.  Each weapon will be both physically disabled (using, among other things, a 5-pound sledge and a cold chisel) and further rendered useless by filling its chamber with the same polymer resin that is then used to attach the gun to the sculpture.  And the PeaceWork, just like a snowball, keeps getting bigger and bigger as guns are added.

I've embarked on the process of making the first PeaceWork in my home town -- Troy, New York.  It may not work -- there are always bureaucratic and political challenges to projects like this.  But if not Troy, then someplace else.  Again and again.  Because the goal of the PeaceWork Project is to pepper the country with PeaceWorks.  Some big, some small, but each with the same purpose:  to catch the eye, and the mind, of a passerby and make him or her think, if only for a moment, about what the American experience should or shouldn't be.

That, to my mind, is the purpose of art.  And that, to my mind, is meaningful action.