Metamorphic

Early in 2020, a family offered me a handgun that had been used in a suicide. They wanted it to be destroyed if it could be used in a piece of art, so much the better.

The challenges the offer held made me take it. Simply knowing that part of the work is a device with a specific, deadly personal use would certainly affect perceptions of the piece in myriad ways.

“Suicide Gun” at the top of the materials list takes over the piece before the imagination does anything with it, and before perception of any finished piece can be freely considered. Societal history and concern, preconception and judgement, along with, of course, the varieties of personal experience—all flood in to control what the viewer “sees.” All of that was on my mind as I followed intuition, through various stages, with no preconceived end result, to this finished piece.

The heat and weight of carrying this through, buffered by long periods of patient waiting for the next step to reveal itself, have been metamorphic—one form under pressure becoming another—as in geology, as in life. As I imagined what the gun's owner and his family and friends must have gone through, I knew I had the title for the piece.

Collaboration came into the production of this piece when I commissioned Nathan Robles of Kennewick, Washington, to produce the human figure upon which the ‘wasp nest' of the remade gun is hung. Big thanks to Nathan for his contribution. You can see more of his work online at RoblesMetalArt.com