Exchange Project

 Members of the NW Collage Society are participating in an exchange project with several high school classes, in which we will all create fold-up postcard/collages and exchange them.  We, the Society folks, are all about 142 years old, and the high school students are, well, a bit younger.  Should be fun!  Here are my two pieces:

Trifold Postcard Collage Project, 2023

10.5"x6", folds to 3.5"x6" for mailing 

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns...Over and Out

 Okey dokey. We're all tired of guns and I'm tired of making art about guns, and nothing ever seems to make a difference, so hey, enough for now.  Thanks for playing, campers.

In Which I Plant Tulips in the Head of the Founder of the Open Carry Movement In Order to Pacify His Second Amendment Brain, 2015

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns

It's Who We Are, 2015

cut & paste paper collage

In the first 23 days of this new year, America had 39 mass shootings (4+ killed, not including the shooter).  It's who we are, it's what we do.

 

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns

Gun Doily, 2023

embroidery on vintage doily

More than 195,000 Americans have died by firearm suicide since 2010.  A huge part of America's suicide problem is a gun problem.  According to the Giffords website, guns are used in only a small fraction of attempted suicides, but because they are so efficiently lethal, they are responsible for a majority of American suicide deaths.  (Giffords is a nonprofit advocacy group run by former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who in 2011 was shot in the head by a gunman who killed 6 people and injured 12 others.)

Suicide attempts are often impulsive acts.  If we can reduce the availability of firearms during moments of crisis, we can reduce suicide rates and save lives.  The NRA says people who want to commit suicide will simply "find another way."   Ignore their lies.  The evidence shows that the vast majority of people who survive suicide attempts do NOT later die from suicide. They DON'T find another way to commit suicide, they find their way out of a crisis and move forward.  When guns are easily available, they don't even get that chance. 

 

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns

Harbingers, 2018

cut & paste paper collage, part of a series of little collages

made from book pages and reading primers for "Zine in a Box" 

Since the Columbine school shootings in 1999, parents, school officials and politicians have struggled with how to protect and prepare schools against gun violence, and most schools now have regularly-scheduled active shooter drills.  Many of these programs rehearse simple lockdown procedures, but the "hardening schools" approach involves teaching kids "skills" -- how to jump out of classroom windows, barricade doors, fight back by throwing things like erasers and books at an attacker.  Sometimes the drills have added elements to make it seem more like a real attack, such as no advance notice or indication that it is only a drill, the sounds of gunfire coming from the school hallways, screams, fake blood, etc. This approach is coming under increasing attack because of the emotional trauma many kids are experiencing as a result of the realism in these kinds of drills, and a significant number of people even question the value of drills at all.  Some states like mine (Washington) are passing legislation to make it clear that realistic simulations of gun violence is not the best approach.

Whatever the approach, the situation is summed up nicely in a tweet from a teacher named Bill Ferriter (@plugusin), at 3:59 AM, on 25 May 2022:

During every school shooter drill for the past 20 years, I've promised my students that I would do whatever it takes to try and keep them safe if we were ever in that horrible position together.

It is America's greatest shame that those words ever need to come out of my mouth.

Thanks for your service, Bill. 

 

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns

 There are only THREE countries in the world that believe their people have some kind of inherent right to own firearms -- Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States of America (Max Fisher and Josh Keller, writing in the NYT).  You want a gun, you get a gun.  It doesn't matter if you are a good man, a bad man, a crazy man, a misogynist, a racist, a fascist, a right-wing conspiracy nut, an abuser, someone who hears voices telling him to kill, someone who's irate that his girlfriend wants a divorce, someone who just got fired, someone who wants to end their crushing depression, someone who likes to get high on meth...etc. etc. etc.  As long as that is how we do it, then nobody in this country is safe.

Lord Lucan and the Amish Girls, 2012

cut & paste paper collage