{"id":10136,"date":"2019-01-25T15:02:25","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T20:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=10136"},"modified":"2019-01-25T15:04:48","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T20:04:48","slug":"one-gun-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/01\/25\/one-gun-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"‘One Gun Gone’: Turning Guns Into Art To Buy More Guns Off The Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years, Providence photographer and sculptor Scott Lapham has taught art to teens and young adults.<\/p>\n

\u201cFour of my students have been lost to gun violence,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a cumulative kind of awakening of how insane and raw it is that there are so many firearms in our communities, how easy it is to get them. It\u2019s just a joke.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn urban communities,\u201d Lapham says, \u201cit\u2019s often street beefs between young males. \u2026 And that\u2019s what happened to my students.\u201d But one doesn\u2019t have to go looking for trouble. \u201cOne of my students was buying a sandwich at a food truck at night and got shot and died. \u2026 They\u2019re kids. And I mean that in every sense of the word.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking to \u201chave some kind of response to gun violence that I thought would be positive,\u201d in September 2015, Lapham launched the \u201cOne Gun Gone\u201d<\/a> project, which is being featured in an exhibition at Providence\u2019s Pop Up Shop, 233 Westminster St.<\/a>, through at least Jan. 26.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very easy to feel overwhelmed or cynical,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted to create a space where students from the neighborhoods in this area most affected can think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cast<\/a>
Cast glass gun from \u201cOne Gun Gone\u201d project. (Courtesy Scott Lapham)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lapham began by legally buying a handgun. In collaboration with \u201cOne Gun Gone\u201d members (teens and twentysomethings who, these days, meet weekly with him, usually at Providence\u2019s New Urban Arts) and adult artists, he \u201cmade a mold of it. And from that mold me and my students have challenged ourselves to make as much art as we can that talks about gun violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve cast guns out of crayons (\u201cChildren are being affected by learning about gun violence too early\u201d) and translucent glass (\u201cWe think of a gun as aggressive and powerful; we think of glass as brittle\u201d). They\u2019ve made gun-shaped functional candles (\u201cWe wanted to make a sculpture about why people were being murdered in the first place\u201d). They\u2019ve molded crayons into guns that resembled pencils\u2014to say education can reduce gun violence, but also seen as speaking about school shootings. They\u2019ve given crayon guns to teams of high school students and grown up artists to transform into their own artwork.<\/p>\n

\"Pencil<\/a>
Pencil gun from \u201cOne Gun Gone\u201d project. (Courtesy Scott Lapham)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cGuns are seductive. They\u2019re powerful,\u201d Lapham notes. \u201cHow can the artwork be more valuable than the gun?\u201d They aim to raise $5,000 from sales of \u201cOne Gun Gone\u201d artworks, T-shirts and posters to fund a gun buy-back in partnership with the city of Providence, Rhode Island State Police and Providence Police\u2014to buy guns back from members of the community. \u201cWhen we sell our artwork, we\u2019re going to buy more guns off the street.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Lapham and his collaborators acknowledge that the number of guns they\u2019ll be able to guy will be tiny compared to the number of guns out there. He says, \u201cSymbolism matters and it gives us a way to change ourselves and hopefully has ripple effects that change other people\u2019s opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Crayon<\/a>
Crayon guns from \u201cOne Gun Gone\u201d project. (Courtesy Scott Lapham)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For years, Providence photographer and sculptor Scott Lapham has taught art to teens and young adults. \u201cFour of my students have been lost to gun violence,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a cumulative kind of awakening of how insane and raw it is that there are so many firearms in our communities, how easy it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,100],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10136"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10136"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10149,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10136\/revisions\/10149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}