Skagit Valley artists' stones honor victims of gun violence

Almost one year after collecting weapons from the public – aiming to transform guns into art, a group of local artist has crafted an emotionally powerful exhibit dedicated to gun violence. Their memorial stones, piled into a cairn, is now on its first public display at the Anacortes Arts Festival. The Memorial Cairn installation is part of the Anacortes Regeneration Project and includes the work of several dozen Skagit Valley artists.

La Conner’s Tracy Powell is among those artists, as well as Natalie Niblack, Pieter VanZanden, Lanny Bergner, Peregrine O’Gormley, Paul Thorne and Kathleen Faulkner. Also providing their work are Sue Roberts, Ann Reid, Sherry Chavers and Treva King. An additional team of ceramicists have crafted memorials to those killed in gun violence.

Looking back on the early days of the project, after about 20 guns were turned in to the group in 2018, Powell says, “Our first priority for the confiscated weapons was to have them destroyed.” And in fact, they did go about cutting and melting the weapons as well as creating casts of the pieces.

Their focus was, and is, on reducing gun violence. Every hour of every day, someone in the U.S. is killed in a shooting, Powell points out – whether that is a suicide, accident, robbery, school shooting or death by police.

But the strategy changed as the artists considered the weapons that had been turned in, recalls Niblack. The group decided to rethink the project. “We wanted to focus on the victims, [of gun violence] not the guns,” she says.

The cairn resulted, standing nine feet high, with 970 individual ceramic rocks, each displaying the name, event, date and age of an individual killed in 84 mass shootings in America. Included among those names are 57 children, and 40 Washington State first responders.

The cairn is accompanied by Peregrine O’Gormley’s fossil sculpture, incorporating some of those retired guns, and a video by Mount Vernon’s John Bowey featuring poetry read by family members affected by shootings, as well as quotes from high school students and a toy gun commercial. The video installation is designed to support the main installation, Bowey says, by bringing to life the words and experiences of people affected by gun violence.

Others involved in the program have been Rita James, director of the Anacortes arts festival and Eric Johnson, who was a city councilman at the time, and Anacortes blacksmith Paul Thorne who helped melt down many of the guns that were turned in, in a portable forge.

Most of the cairn’s tiles are ceramic blocks with names stamped on them, while the heavier stones carved by Powell are mounted on the bottom. Steve Klein, La Conner artist and Anacortes Arts Festival board member, crafted blue bricks featuring every Washington first responder killed by gunfire.

Powell also built one sculpture that incorporates a retired gun, which will be on display at his booth in the Anacortes Art Festival, named “Peacemaker.” When he first started working with the .22 pistol he says, “I was pretty stumped.” More typically he approaches an art project with a focus on the sculpture lurking in the limestone, granite or wood. So when he got to work with the pistol he had to change his mind set. The resulting sculpture depicts a figure bending that gun as he gazes toward the heavens. He says it’s the first and last of the pieces in which he’s incorporating guns into his work.

One similar effort that has helped draw Powell to the restorative project is his work toward world nuclear disarmament. Whether it’s personal guns or nuclear weapons, he says “We think we need weapons because we are afraid. Fear encourages you to hate rather than accept. I refuse to believe humans have to be that way, I think we can do better.” His Washington disarmament chapter, known as “No More Bombs” is focused exactly on that.

Meanwhile, after the Anacortes event, the group is hoping to find a permanent home for the cairn.

The first public showing is at the Anacortes Arts Festival Arts at the Port. It opened at last Saturday’s reception and will be on display through Aug. 4 at the Port Transit Shed.