Art Is My Weapon: MN, 2017 – Exhibit Finale & Panel Discussion

Please join us for a respectful and constructive conversation about gun violence with law enforcement, community leaders, and exhibiting artists – set amidst the exhibition “Art Is My Weapon: MN.” This exhibit finale will be this Friday, October 27th, from 7-9pm, with the formal discussion beginning at 8pm.

Pillsbury United Communities (PUC) presents the local exhibit “Art Is My Weapon” at Gamut Gallery. In August 2016, PUC – in collaboration with the City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department – conducted a gun buyback to remove guns from the street with no questions asked. They collected up to 250 guns that were decommissioned and disseminated to locally recognized artists to use as raw materials in their art.

Painters, glass artists, sculptors, photographers, poets, and other artists used the decommissioned firearms to make works of art that address the issues of guns and gun violence in America. Each artist used the guns in their medium to express a thought, make a statement, open a discussion and stimulate thinking about guns in our culture.

Inspired by the national traveling exhibition, “Guns In The Hands of Artists” produced by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, “Art Is My Weapon” is an outgrowth of that project that came to the Twin Cities in the summer of 2016. “Guns In the Hands of Artists” was first organized in New Orleans in the mid 1990s by artist Brian Borrello and Jonathan Ferrara to create a conversation about guns and gun violence in our society by bringing the conversation in the realm of art as the language for dialogue.

Art is My Weapon is curated locally by Nikki McComb of Pillsbury United Communities and John Schuerman of Instinct Gallery.