PLASTICS: The Toy Gun Project

It began In Buffalo, NY, on May 14, 2022 when the mass shooter killed ten people at the Tops Supermarket on Jefferson Avenue. The local organization, F.A.T.H.E.R.S., set up a program to exchange toy guns for healthy toys and collected hundreds of toy guns. F.A.T.H.E.R.S. had been working with children in the neighborhood for many years and were committed to redirecting youth away from violence. 

Rather than just toss the plastic guns in a landfill, I volunteered to find a way to turn some of the plastic into an art project. The guns were difficult to break down into useful pieces and at one point Lenny Lane of F.A.T.H.E.R.S. used a steamroller to crush them into pieces small enough to work with. After many experiments, I decided to create a plastic wall hanging loosely based on the quilts of the 'underground railroad'. This felt appropriate since Buffalo had been a major stop helping people escape to Canada, I painted squares of latch hook material with quilt patterns in acrylic to work as a template for positioning each piece of plastic.The project required many hours of cutting, drilling and twist-tying pieces together to make 12 separate panels.

Fortunately, many volunteers stepped forward to help.  They are, in alphabetical order: Marti Cat, Elizabeth Leader, Hal Leader, Rowan Leader, Charles Martin, Becca Schwarzberg, Rose Synor, Phyllis Thompson, Eve Tulbert, and Shirley Verrico.

On completion, the F.A.T.H.E.R.S. organization received the panels and donated them out into the community. A full-size digital print of the entire quilt is in the collection of the Frank E. Merriweather Jr. Library on Jefferson Avenue, close to the site of the massacre.