DEWEAPONIZING THE GUN - Walton Creel

The terms gun and weapon are practically interchangeable. From hunting to war, self defense to target practice, the gun has been a symbol of power and destruction. Art and entertainment have both taken the same approach to he gun. Traveling Wild West shows had gunslingers that shot crude silhouettes and names, but this was done to illustrate the shooters prowess. Some artists have used high speed film to capture a bullet slicing through its target, while other artists have melted guns into sculptures.

When I decided I wanted to make art using a gun, I was not sure what direction I would have to take. I knew I did not want to use it simply as an accent to work I was doing, but as the focus. My main goal was to take the destructive power away from the gun. To manipulate the gun into a tool of creation and use it in a way that removed it from its original purpose. To deweaponize it.

During my first experiment I came across the concept of creating an image hole by hole on a surface. I also figured out that canvas would be too stressed by the process of a rifle firing many bullets into it. I moved on to aluminum and, with further experimentation, I figured out exactly how far apart my shots needed to be and that moving beyond .22 caliber was simply too destructive. When the aluminum was painted beforehand, the blast of the gun knocked off a tiny amount of paint around each hole, which helped fuse the image together.

Deweaponizing the Gun is an ongoing series presented in installments.

SHOOTING/LOADING : AN AUDIO COMPANION FOR THE VISUAL SERIES DEWEAPONIZING THE GUN

Deweaponizing the Gun is a series that is visual in nature, but the process of creating each work is very dynamic. Instead of painting quietly in a studio, I am outside, using a gun to shoot an image on to a piece of metal. I decided to attempt to capture that energy in a non-visual medium by making an audio recording of the process. The result was Shooting/Loading an audio companion for the visual series Deweaponizing the Gun, a one sided 12 inch vinyl record featuring 17:55 of the sound of me shooting and loading.

I wanted the experience of listening to this record to be challenging for the listener. Under normal circumstances, the sound of gunfire is something that causes panic and provokes a flight for safety. By listening to the gunfire on the record, the listener is faced with the challenge of hearing a normally destructive sound, attempting to resolve that sound to a creative process without visual clues. There are no pictures of guns, ammunitions, or the finished images I create with guns in or on the jacket or the record itself.