Artists hammer, smelt guns in Anacortes

Family and friends brought a dozen guns and a plethora of knives to be fired in a blacksmith’s forge and pounded flat and twisted into useless pieces of metal – and made into a future sculpture. Five artists, a couple of churches, City Councilman Eric Johnson and Director of the Anacortes Are Festival Rita James are the force behind “The Anacortes Regeneration Project: from Guns to Art, from Conflict to Peace.” They were joined by Chris Wardenburg-Skinner, an Edison artist with Safe and Sane Skagit, which promotes “safety and sanity to firearm use and availability.”

Guns were accepted last Saturday at Anacortes’ Seafarer’s Memorial Park, but it seemed all weapons came from supporters.

The project honors first responders and victims of gun violence by taking donated weapons and turning them into artwork for public display.

The artists are Paul Thorne, Tracy Powell, Kathleen Faulkner, Lanny Bergner and Natalie Niblack.

Powell, of Shelter Bay, a long-time peace activist and pacifist, used an angle grinder to cut guns and knives into pieces for fellow sculptor’s Thorne forge, anvil, hammer and sledge. Thorne, a teacher of his blacksmithing trade, kept up a steady patter, sharing the origins of his 10,000 year old vocation, through Roman ruins to his present day propane fueled forge.

He invited one and all, young and old, to share the hammering of weapons into temporarily worthless pieces of metal. One day they will be art.

Juniors and elders took turns taking the sledge hammer to guns, working in rhythm with master blacksmith Thorne. The elders included Herta Kurp and Rev. Diane Ramerman of Christ Episcopal Chruch.

Frank Lacy brought two of his father’s guns, “one, when I was a little kid, we would go rabbit hunting. The other was a Japanese rifle he brought back from World War II,” he recounted. He took a turn with the sledge on them.

Ron Metcalf, in his black baseball cap with the yellow NRA in block letters, sat quietly dismantling weapons. A gunsmith from Mount Vernon, he was also offering his skills, though he is a gun lover. “I do this begrudgingly. ... I am not for the meaning of this, the smelting down” of guns that have value. He said it broke his heart to see a never been used Colt 45 get destroyed.

Later Metcalf spoke to the project’s purpose: “I think we can all get along. I believe people have a right to their own opinion. ... We don’t have to fight each other. We can have opinions and not be at war with each other.”

Powell had hoped more guns would be turned in, providing more material for the five artists to work with. He suggested making “flowers and butterflies. Make life forms out of the weapons.” He is offering to pick up weapons from people’s homes, glad to take donations at any time.

Johnson, a deacon at Christ Episcopal, was wearing a clergy collar. His efforts are in response to school killings, he said, noting “we treat guns like idols.” As a deacon, he “brings hearts and hands together. We see problems in the world and bring them back to church,” hoping to resolve them.

The dozen guns and twice that many knives smelted and beaten flat will never function as they were designed to. Johnson and his colleagues have resolved that specific set of weapons.

The finished work will be determined by the donated materials and completed in 2019.

Guns can be brought to the Gentry House, 1208 7th St, Anacortes this Saturday, again from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.