Two Artists Put America's Gun Violence Epidemic Front And Center

The installation during the winter months at MoCA Westport. Martha Lewis Photos.

It’s the words on the flags that draw a viewer closer, until they are crisp and clear as day. Fist Bumps Not Bump Stocks, reads one, against a background the same blue as a robin’s egg. Open Arms Not Fire Arms reads another, in thick, blocky blue letters on a faded yellow background. On a third, the lavender of dried sprigs, This Life Not The After Life. 

They are part of Thoughts and Prayers, an installation from artists Martha Lewis and Margaret Roleke that uses found, donated and repurposed materials to take a decisive stand against gun violence in the United States. As both artists—and the country—reel from two mass shootings in the past two weeks, they are working to think about the impact they can have on the dialogue around gun control in this country. 

The artists are currently installing it at Five Points Arts Center in Torrington, where it found a home after stints on Governor’s Island and more recently at MoCA Westport this and last year. The artists, who are both connected to New Haven, described it as a chance for vital dialogue in a country that has become increasingly more siloed. 

“It is provocative, but it also invites viewers.” Lewis said in a recent interview over Zoom. She remembered watching families stop by the piece when it was first installed at Governor’s Island, pausing take every piece of it in. “It was incredibly touching. There’s something about the factual nature of this material that’s really important. People need to see it and feel it to understand it.”

The installation, which takes its title from the same three-word phrase that often follows mass tragedy in the U.S., pulls some of its visual and narrative strength from its source materials. Roleke, a multimedia artist who has long championed gun reform through her work, has used spent shotgun shells on a large welded steel frame, designed as a larger-than-life cross. Lewis, meanwhile, has collected and cut up used t-shirts, onto which she has screen printed slogans that exhort gun reform and an end to the gun lobby. They include phrases like Toys Not Guns and Fire Flies Not Fire Arms, arranged in the colors of the rainbow.   

The project has been a learning experience for both of them. When the two began working together, Lewis said, she was surprised, and then alarmed, to find that shotgun shells were candy-colored. From afar, they look like they could be Pez containers or Bic Lighters, rather than parts in the machinery of death. As Lewis collected and printed on the shirts, she worked to match them with the bright shells, such that the flags were brighter and more vivid the closer to the cross they got. The fact that they are lived in—that they have human DNA on them—is part of the project, she said.  

Installed outdoors, the sculpture takes on a life of its own. At each location, Roleke and Lewis have found a tree, and placed Roleke’s cruciform sculpture several feet away from it. Then, Lewis has strung her flags, of which there are dozens, from each horizontal arm of the cross. It creates two continuous lines from the cross to the tree, on which the flags flap and flutter in the wind.  

Liz Leggett, the director of exhibitions at MoCA Westport, said that after seeing the work, she could envision it going on a statewide or national tour meant to catalyze discussion. While the museum asked the artists to deinstall Thoughts and Prayers early last month, she said that the two would be welcome to return at a later date “as we rotate and figure out what are we going.” She added that the museum moved up the deinstallation date because it needed to put up a tent for outdoor programming.  

“If anything, I see how something like this becomes a monument and a conversation piece to move around the country,” Leggett said. The artists are on the same page: both Lewis and Roleke discussed the possibility of a tour, if locations like the Connecticut State Capitol would have them.

It could not be more gut-churningly timely. Since the beginning of this year, there have been 146 mass shootings in the U.S., according to the Gun Violence Archive. Those include high-profile incidents like Nashville’s Covenant School, downtown Louisville, and a dance studio in Monterey Park, California, but also gun deaths that don’t make the national news, from Vermont to Maryland to Indiana to Colorado to New Mexico and nearly every state in between. 

This year, 11,890 known people have died from gun violence, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Over 50 percent of them died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Seventy three children under the age of 11 have been killed; 167 have been injured. Over 400 teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17 have died from gun violence before their 18th birthday. In 2020, gun violence surpassed all other causes as the leading cause of death for children under 18. 

That violence is unending: dozens more people will have died from a gunshot wound by the time this article goes up than when it began. In the past year in New Haven and Hamden, they comprise a list that is far too long, and includes 15-year-old Elijah Gomez, a sweet-faced lover of nature who was shot and killed by fellow teens on his walk home from school; 23-year-old dad of two Dontae Myers, who died of a gunshot wound on New Year’s Day; 16-year-old Joshua Vazquez, who was shot just days before Christmas last year. 

It’s a cycle that doesn’t stop, Lewis added. Last week, as she and Roleke were working with Five Points to finalize the installation, Tennessee State Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson temporarily lose their seats after they participated in a rally against gun violence. That same week, the Missouri State Legislature voted to exempt firearms from the state sales tax. A pregnant person, meanwhile, can’t legally get an abortion in the state. 

“It’s so pervasive in our culture,” Lewis said. “You know, it’s in every movie with every big star, in Westerns, in games, video and board games. It’s in everything that we have. It’s like smoking in the past. Everybody was smoking constantly. Guns are just everywhere.”

“We treat it like it’s a more important part of our constitution than people’s children’s lives,” she added. “What happened to ‘Thou shalt not kill?’ We seem to have dumped that one.’”

Roleke, who has four children of her own, said the installation also strikes a personal chord. Decades ago, two of her children were born in England, where the majority of police don’t carry guns. Having seen that, she said, she knows that it’s possible. And yet—she also sees the realities of a uniquely American epidemic. 

When she moved back to the U.S., she learned that one of its realities was hearing a constant news cycle about gun violence, without significant legislative change. Ten years ago, she lived close to the town of Sandy Hook, and knows the grandfather of one of the children who was killed. 

More recently, she’s seen how guns are woven into the cultural mainstream, from paintball parties to which her kids were invited to an offer from her son’s boss to go to a shooting range.

“It’s like, that’s what we’re sick of,” she said. “It’s been years of doing projects around gun control … It’s just that ‘thoughts and prayers’ is just all we ever say in this country.”

At Five Points, Lewis said that the two artists are excited to have a new space to engage in those discussions. This time, the tree from which Roleke’s cruciform sculpture will be spaced is an apple tree, with a nearby stump that will hold a box into which people can drop their own thoughts and prayers. Once it is installed, it will remain at Five Points through early fall.  

Prior to installing the work, both artists spoke with staff about a plan for potential vandalism. Lewis was resolute, she said in a phone call Monday: if any part of Thoughts and Prayers is defaced, she and Roleke will rebuild. That’s part of the point, she added—people have to keep engaging with the material. Art, rather than social media or a heated public hearing, may be an easy access point. 

“We've become so blunted to this, because it seems so normal for people to get shot everyday in this country,” she said. “For me, if anybody does anything to the flags, it's very clear that we put out an open call, we make more, we use it as a means to getting to more discussions. We will build it back again. Art makes it possible to have these conversations.”  

Judy McElhone, founder and executive director of Five Points Art Center, said she is excited to have the installation at the space. The center, which opened its 855 University Dr. home in October 2021, has existed as an organization since 2012. It has satellite locations on University Drive, Water Street, and Main Street, all in Torrington.    

“Margaret Roleke and Martha Lewis’s outdoor installation, Thoughts and Prayers, is in keeping with Five Points Arts’ commitment to the exhibition of outstanding contemporary art which encourages the contemplation and discussion of the world in which we live, work and play,” she said by email.   

The work’s next location is still to be determined.