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My Dad's Gun Collection
2002-present (work in progress)
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There is a
moment before or just at the
first awareness of an
occurrence of
violence where the brutal
outcome can be known or
imagined. It’s
an instant of stillness,
suspension, where nothing
has yet happened but
dread sets in. Some of
the film loops, photographs,
and
sculptures I have made imply
this quiet moment or else
they imply
possible violence but they
never cross the line into
action and so
remain innocent. The lacy
filigreed gun sculptures I
have been making
out of sugar or porcelain
function in a similar way,
as they lay
prettily inert in their
cases.
These sculptures also embody
a basic ambivalence toward
guns that is
particularly American,
though not specific to
America. (A friend who
had grown up in Lebanon
during the 70’s looked at
one of the small
caliber sugar handguns I’d
sculpted out of sugar and
expressed a
similar casual view of them
as he said that Oh yes, his
mom had one
just like that that when he
was young that he saw her
put in her purse
whenever she went out at
night. I asked him if
he knew about the
gun, if he knew what kind it
was, relvolver or pistol,
etc. but he’d
been a child when he saw her
putting it into her handbag
and so he
simply accepted its
presence. It wasn’t
something she talked
about but with his child’s
openness he accepted it as
something she
needed to take with her
without worrying about the
implications of why
she would need a gun.)
The mixed message sent by a
dangerous
object like a gun being made
in a fragile material like
sugar or
porcelain is a reflection of
my own mixed feelings of
desire and
nostalgia and apprehension
toward guns.
“My Dad’s Gun
Collection” (a work in
progress) is a piece I
started working on after a
few years of making other
gun sculptures
from sugar and
porcelain. After all,
it’s the memory of seeing
one of my dad’s guns when I
was very young that prompted
me to start
making guns in the first
place. I’d already
been working with
delicate materials to make
sculpture and the whiteness
of the sugar and
porcelain is inherent to
those materials—lending
whatever I made from
them an ethereal feel.
I was thinking about guns in
general at
the time (shootings were in
the news a lot right about
then) and then I
started thinking about how I
was fascinated with my dad’s
guns when I
was a child. The gun
sculptures I make are lacy,
white, and light -
exactly opposite in
appearance to the pistol my
brother found hidden in
Mom and Dad’s bedroom one
afternoon.
The guns were around, I’d
heard a little about them,
knew they were
dangerous, but I rarely saw
one. I knew there were
hunting rifles
my father kept but the more
compelling ones were the
handguns that we
had been told were very
dangerous and that were kept
hidden from us
children. Despite
Dad’s good intentions of
keeping the handgun
they had for protection
tucked away in my parent’s
bedroom, my younger
brother, who confessed as a
grown-up to being a snoop
who periodically
searched my parents drawers,
found it. I was
sitting that
afternoon on the couch that
was at the bottom of the
stairway, probably
watching cartoons on the
television, though what I
was actually doing
escapes me. My brother
came walking slowly down the
stairs
balancing in his
outstretched hands a
pistol---it looked huge in
his
hands, heavy, and the metal
was so black that it seemed
to absorb the
light. He was very young,
perhaps 4 or 5 and I was 2
years older.
I watched in silent
fascination as he descended
the stairs taking each
step carefully and he
glanced up at me and said
“Look what I found.” I
remember sitting stunned on
the couch and calling my
mother, and I
think the tone of my voice
let her know she should come
quickly.
She came from the kitchen
and promptly took it
away. My brother
probably joined me on the
couch then to watch
cartoons. For years
after that the pistol was a
topic of conversation and
together my
brother and I would go to my
parent’s bedroom and look
everywhere for
it, though the guns were
better hidden after that and
we never found it
again.
Strangely, my brother’s
knack for finding the guns
hidden in my
parent’s house still
lingers. A few years
ago we were all home
for a summer holiday with
our own children and
families. My
brother happened to open a
drawer next to the easy
chair in the living
room and there was one of
Dad’s pistols he’d forgotten
to put away
before the grandchildren
arrived, lying
quietly. Without much
fanfare he took it out and
asked Dad to put it away and
that was the
end of it. We
still have the acceptance of
the gun’s
presence we developed as
children.
After I started sculpting
the guns I eventually had to
broach the topic
with my parents because of
course my father especially
was quite aware
that the gun imagery
probably has something to do
with his own guns and
he alluded to
this—eventually opening the
door to more stories about
them being told (as well as
there being more arguments
between us about
the politics of gun control
in the U.S. We can
agree on some
things but others seem to
set us at opposite ends of
the
spectrum). I ended up
telling them how the time I
saw the
forbidden handgun in my
brother’s hands had stayed
with me and prompted
some of my work. My
Mom then told a story of how
when we were
very young, whenever my Dad
went away on business trips,
she slept with
a gun under her pillow for
protection. One night
she woke up from
a nightmare about “robbers”
as she called them and
thought she saw
someone standing at the end
of her bed. As she was
reaching for
the gun, the image faded as
she fully awakened and she
realized the
intruder was just the
remnants of her dream.
She said she never
slept with a gun under the
pillow again because we
children wandered
into her bedroom at night
sometimes and she didn’t
want to wake up
confusedly from a deep sleep
and reach for the gun when
her children
were in the room.
I called my father a while
ago and asked him to give me
a list of the
guns he owns-I wasn’t sure
how many or what types he
had. He sent
me a list and I saw that
there are 14 in all and it’s
a collection
reflects the various
meanings and uses a gun has
in American
culture. The rifles
and shotguns are mostly for
hunting while the
handguns reflect a fear of
an intruder or danger on the
street-these
were purchased for
protection. One or two guns
are probably simply
interesting models or
collector’s items.
I’ve made 9 of the pieces
from his collection so far
and have displayed
them laying in a case-the
whiteness and silence of the
sculptures take
them away from their
potentially violent
origins. As I work on
this piece I indulge my
fascination with the guns
and the mystery they
hold for me as objects that
I was never allowed to touch
when I was
young. The moment of
stillness that occurs before
an act of
violence is reflected in the
sculptures themselves as it
exists in the
memory of the gun in my
brother’s hands-it is drawn
out endlessly,
allowing for a prolonged
contemplation, and in both
cases the potential
violent result never comes.
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for
a statement about the work click here
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