My goal for this project is to continue to create a new body of work that will be healing for the community while in collaboration with Guns to Gardens Metro Denver/RAWtools Colorado. Guns to Gardens creates safe surrender events for guns, works with artists and blacksmiths to create garden tools from surrendered guns, and has invited me to create artwork through a photographic project. This aligns with my goal by bringing the community together in a positive life-affirming way, creating community support to reduce gun violence via a creative process, and creating/viewing photography in a non-traditional way.

I am partnering with Guns to Gardens Metro Denver to make photographic images of guns that will be surrendered and cut up. These images will also then be cut up and reimagined into collages of murmuration formations of birds in flight. These images include guns I am personally surrendering that were inherited, and guns surrendered by the community for various reasons. This project represents the fast and slow violence to the environment and communities being transformed into a gathering of peace, collective action, and adaptability.

The photography process for this project uses only light, water, and alchemy – much like a garden. This process also transcends the violent language that photography and guns have historically shared: to load, aim, and shoot*. By using the cyanotype and lumen photographic process, it removes this language and uses sunlight to create the initial images. As the images are cut and collaged, destruction becomes creation.

The murmuration images are a metaphor for the power of community coming together in peace and unity to imagine a world beyond violence and resilience where all can thrive. Being that much of my work relates to the healing power of nature and gardens, this seemed like a natural fit for me, and the final products (garden tools and the creation of images) are a way to reconnect with and envision the ecosystem in a life-giving way. The final exhibition will include collaged murmuration images as part of a larger wall installation and lumen images of garden plants planted with the Guns to Gardens spade - as another way to bring the project full circle.

I attended the Guns to Gardens event 3/22 to surrender guns and volunteer to help chop them up. I worked with local teens from Students Demand Action after the surrender event to create images from the disabled guns and cut up cyanotypes of surrendered guns. This group of teens is part of a high school group to prevent gun violence. I will be visiting with this group in the fall with the final images, and they will be invited to any gallery reception. This creates a tangible process that allows teens to be involved in the events and also makes photography accessible to students in a new way beyond what is viewed on their phones.

The specific audiences will include the teens I am working with, those in the community interested in surrendering guns, gallery and art patrons, and those healing from gun violence. I envision this project to be a way for people to be physically involved in a process of art, healing, and discussion. Those who see the final product will be witnessing a way for community to exist in a joyful collaboration even in an uncertain environment, instead of coming together in tragedy. Gallery patrons may initially only appreciate the aesthetic beauty of the images but then take in the resonance of the community actions aligned to create this work.

This project ties together so much of my passion and purpose as an artist by bringing community together, supporting social justice and art as healing, and creating gardens as a way to heal and feed my community.

*A reference to writings by Susan Sontag

For all the womxn who have been murdered or assaulted and not made the news, I remember you today. For all who have been hurt by those in positions of power either in their own home or elsewhere, for those long since forgotten due to your skin color, gender, sexual orientation, or class. Too many to list. This project is dedicated to you.