I happen to be a self-taught artist who has become really afraid that my country is going to become a hyper-violent chaotic wasteland with only two classes: Predator and Prey.
If even the specter of twenty dead children is not enough to persuade our Congress that the right to peaceably assemble cannot trump the absolute "liberty" to shoot anyone with anything over whatever it is you deem a threat, what will it take?
I believe it must take bringing back, not just the Newtown victims, but thousands and thousands and thousands of Americans whose hopes and dreams were blasted away in a second. It is time for every victim to testify for gun safety. Newtown cannot do it alone.
A couple weeks ago, I began to paint little portraits of gun victims to with the idea that no matter what it takes, a Gun Victims Memorial Quilt, with all the faces and the likenesses of the thousands who die every year staring out and asking why they had to be unwilling sacrifices to the Temple of the Golden Glock in order for the Second Amendmant to truly work.
Words alone don't seem to be doing the job. I issue this challenge to every artist that wants to make a difference. Get out your oils, your acrylics, your collage, your art digital imagery, your watercolors, your beads, your yarn, your found object cameos, ANYTHING, and bring back all the dead to testify what gun safety is really all about. Let's line the galleries with their images. Let's carry them into every public space there is, theaters, businesses, art spaces, libraries, public malls, and near certain car racing venues.
Bring back especially those whose deaths didn't make the news. We may not know of their loss, and that is the most tragic. I don't wish to censor anyone in choice of imagery, but for me, I restrict myself to local losses right here in Charm City because I (wish I didn't) have such a wide array to choose from.
No matter what happens this year in Congress, I plan to keep on painting the little 9x12 portraits until sense comes at the federal level. I will show them every art venue I get. But I am asking for help. I defy even the most gun-slavering worshipper to stare at all these images and still think "Only to shoot is the truth."
This is an image of my first offering for a quilt. James Smith the 3rd had just turned three years old on January 2, 1997. To celebrate not being a baby anymore, he was taken to the barber shop for his first big boy real haircut. But while he was sitting next to his mommy on the waiting bench two angry young men with semi-automatics burst in shooting and he got a bullet in the head instead.
How about it? Can a Filibert paintbrush be mightier than the Bushmaster?