The Time It Takes
This summer I received a message on Facebook from someone who wanted to give me a gun.
His reasoning was pretty straightforward.
With mass-shootings ravaging our nation his gun had become symbolic of something he didn’t stand for. As a lifelong gun owner, raised in the thick of northern Wisconsin gun culture, he hoped I could decommission it in a meaningful way. He knew my work and felt like I was the right person to reach out to.
He was offering me an AR-15 assault rifle.
Having only shot a handgun once in my late teens, walking away from the range nonplussed by the loud bang and kickback, I never developed an affinity for guns. This offer deserved both time and reflection and hinged on whether or not I felt I could transform the object into a vote. I understood why he contacted me. However the gravity of this ask was not simple. In order to understand the rifle, I'd need to live with it, to sit in contemplation of the ramifications of its existence, as well as potential outcomes from granting it a death.
We set up a visit.
When I arrived, the rifle lay in a case on the living room couch. Immaculately designed, lightweight and beautifully surfaced, it’s allure was undeniable and my revulsion was immediate. Engineered to rapidly fire bullets and tear orange size chunks of flesh from human bodies, it's curvature asked to be lifted and held to mine.
I left empty handed and surprised by how shaken I was. I had said yes.
Between Bodies
I began this project with questions.
The answers arrived in the form of drawings.
As I began working though ideas, I soon realized handing the AR-15 off to a foundry– while it could help me avoid the uncanny feeling of being in the rifle’s proximity, would mediate the project too greatly. A corporeal exchange between my body and the gun was necessary. I had to use my hands to bring it down.
The AR-15 needed to be reduced to a powder reminiscent of what we all become. This project would be in part a ceremony.
As guns are designed to fit and respond to the human form, the AR-15, like all other weapons is engineered to mark, impede or kill another body whether human or animal. Guns don’t fire without a body. The AR-15 is designed to deliver a bullet that jaggedly carves through a body on impact. This inherent relationship shared by the assault rifle and the body spoke to why my body should be an active agent when cutting, sanding and grinding it to dust. Like preparing a loved one’s body for burial, my hands could grant a humane end to a inhumane design.
I embraced the many hours ahead as a meditation on mortality, power and transition.
To Un-Gun
Untucking the AR-15 from a hiding spot in the basement I brought the rifle upstairs and set it on the dining room table. My parents had dropped by on their last day visiting the Midwest. My stepdad, a retired Army veteran and rancher from Northern New Mexico, had agreed to help me learn how to break the the assault rifle down.
While I wanted to learn the steps, I also wanted to talk with someone I knew and loved about guns and gun culture. This time with William provided both. As soon as we got started the usual family banter began, but this time the debate was on if guns killed people or if people killed people. Mom weighed in from the couch holding their Chihuahua.
For a little over an hour we practiced. His hands moved across the weapon like a concert pianist disassembling and assembling its components. I on the other hand, fumbled through each step awkwardly handling each part like the city slicker pacifist I am.
He was patient and good humored. I was over exuberant from nerves.
While I will always be ambivalent about the 2nd Amendment and William will support it, we found common ground. We agreed more mental health resources need to be readily available for all, as do mandatory background checks, and semi-automatic and automatic weapons really have no reason to be in civilian hands.
Relieved and giving hugs as they headed out, the AR-15 was in pieces.
From Live to Inert
Over the next four weeks, I set to work on the AR-15 in a small corner of the studio usually used for wet working ceramic and glass.
Work sessions began with checking the seams of my makeshift work tent made of draped plastic and rubber sheet to ensure they were still sealed. Then I’d attach my iPhone on to a tripod, put on safety gear and hit record.
While I’m pretty disciplined about documenting the stages of my projects, this was the first time I’d recorded a series of full length videos. I felt others may find meaning in watching the transformation an AR-15 from live to inert, whole to part, weapon to dust. I saw my studio as a sight of synthesis involved in a much larger conversation, and hoped these contributions would be of service in some way.
As hours passed at the bench, understanding how to unmake each part became easier. The chest strap needed to first be frayed by picking it apart with a needle before being snipped to fluff with scissors. Chopping 1/4″ segments from the steel barrel expedited the grinding process, leaving the grinding wheel cleaner as they generated less heat than larger chunks.
I focused on the material at hand as a strategy for overriding the physical discomfort of the process. I thought of the school yards, the synagogues, the mosques and the churches. I saw the faces of the survivors leaving night clubs, concerts and movie theaters. I recalled the voicemails shared by media outlets made by people hiding under desks, in classrooms or caught out in the open. I envisioned surgeons in theater and in waiting rooms talking with families. I sat in a space of reflection as the weapon shifted into sparks and powdered debris.
At the end of each session, I’d dust myself off and methodically collect as much of the debris as I could. Then I would write.
This video combines footage from the process with The Time It Takes– written word recorded during the project. Full length segments are available here. Click here for a link to the text only.
To Dust
To Dust and the Revolution Print Series are the resulting physical artworks to come from the AR-15.
