Merge, One Gun Gone, now on display at the Waterfire Arts Center, combines art and activism through the creation and sales of art made from disabled guns. In addition to pre-pandemic visual artwork, the exhibition includes the unveiling of welded metal sculptures, including a clock face — “Wrong Place, Wrong time” — and a web with a spider whose body is the cylinder of a revolver. The artists chose a black widow because “one bite can be lethal, like a gun.”
There are glass guns, wax guns, and even one covered in small mussel shells.
We ran into the first iteration of the ‘One Gun Gone’ project back in 2017 when it was a Pop Up exhibition. It’s depressing to think how much worse things have gotten in the interim.
An artist panel and community conversation is scheduled for 6pm, Thursday, May 25.
Seen here, a candle sculpture by the OGG Group references the sidewalk shrines with votive candles that always emerge where loved ones have been shot.
“Merge, One Gun Gone” runs through May 28, WFAC, 475 Valley Street, (directions)
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‘Black Widow’ (and shadow) by Hector Rodriguez and Ozell Collins.
Wax guns, some with crayons still visible.