Youth and adults alike get creative at the Arms2Art seminar led by Lisa Longacher
Photo by Mike Micciche for MC USA.
Anabaptists have long loved Isaiah 2:4, the verse about beating swords into plowshares and learning war no more. But in the 21st century, most war is not being waged with swords, and most plowing is done from the seat of a tractor. So how might Mennonites turn metaphorical swords into metaphorical plowshares at Follow Jesus 25? By making art with recycled gun cases.
Led by Lisa Longacher, vice president for advancement at Hesston College, the youth seminar Arms2Art: Collage-Making with Recycled Gun Cases was packed on Wednesday morning, with over 160 people in attendance. The room was overflowing with youth and adults alike, with latecomers sitting on the floor in order to participate.
Longacher kicked off the seminar with a brief presentation about different ways of protesting via art, and showed some examples of how discarded weaponry can be used to make jewelry, sculptures or collages.
“As Mennonites,” she said, “one of the things I hope we can all agree on is that we want to be peacemakers, and we want to teach the world that guns are not the answer.”
Photo by Mike Micciche for MC USA
Longacher passed out paper, markers, magazine pages, scissors, rubber cement, pieces of quilt scraps and most importantly, fabric scraps from gun cases which were donated to her by Raw Tools, an organization that turns guns into garden tools. Raw Tools has a booth in the exhibit hall where you can learn more about their work and buy their products.
Multiple youth participants expressed that they appreciated the opportunity to do something hands-on and creative during convention.
“I experience and learn very well through hands-on activities rather than somebody giving me a lecture,” said Ella Farrough from South Bend, Indiana. She said she feels discouraged by the lack of political progress being made toward gun control, and that she is “trying to fight back in any way that I can and stand up for the people who deserve to live in our country.”
Anna Smucker, from Goshen, Indiana, agreed with Farrough, saying that for many students, “gun violence is always on your mind.” She said she knows people personally who have been affected by gun violence, and is grateful for the opportunity to “express myself through art like this and think about [the issue of gun violence] more deeply.”
Orlando Gonzalez from Newton, Kansas, was working on drawing a pig and squirrel underneath a tree he was collaging out of green and brown gun case fabric.
“I wanted to make something good out of something so bad,” he said.
Hannah Himes from Kidron, Ohio, used gun case fabric and magazine scraps to collage a heart with the words “God makes messy things beautiful like only he can,” and Nya Mattar from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, painted a sunset interrupted with gun case scraps and phrases she linked to gun violence, such as “in a matter of minutes,” which illustrates just how quickly gun violence can be inflicted.
For many creative youth and adults, the seminar was a nice change of pace from the more stationary aspects of convention, and they left the seminar with a piece of art that can be used for both decoration and protest.
“You can protest things in all kinds of ways,” Longacher told the crowd, “use your voice, use your creativity — whatever!”
Written by Greta Lapp Klassen for MC USA.