THE CRAFTED LIFE 59 the cra ed life / american craft summer 2022 / forge HOW I MADE IT BY KIMBERLY COBURN ABOVE: At an event by Lead to Life, an organization that partners with artist James Brenner to melt guns into shovel handles, a mother affected by gun violence offers up a gun to be transformed. OPPOSITE: James Brenner places a gun over his iron furnace to begin the process of melting it. Material Alchemy How three artists transform street guns and military uniforms into regenerative craft—and help others in the process. Alongside the East River in New York, a bronze statue hoists his hammer, frozen at the height of his swing. His muscular body torques like an anxious spring, his toes grip the platform for purchase, and his left hand seizes the hilt of a sword that ends not in a sharp point but a wide tongue of metal. The nine-foot behemoth was sculpted by Soviet artist Yevgeny Vuchetich and offered to the United Nations in 1959 by Nikita Khrush- chev as a gesture of peace. Its title— Let Us Beat Our Swords into Plowshares —is taken from the biblical prophecies of Isaiah and Micah that a day of peace will come when people “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” Hammering a sword into a plow blade does more than turn one tool into another; it rev- olutionizes a way of thinking. Through cast- ing guns into sculpture, dissolving them into ink, or breaking down military uniforms into paper, artists are opening avenues of transfor- mation through their practice and transmut- ing tools of violence into regenerative craft. The techniques they use in service of this vision are varied, and the process often proves as revelatory as the completed work. Melt Our Guns into Shovels For James Brenner, converting guns into shovels isn’t just a symbol of peace—it’s an opportu- nity for community. A large-scale metal sculp- tor based in Minneapolis, he discovered metal casting’s capacity for collaborative engagement Photos by James O. Brenner. 60 american craft summer 2022 / forge / the crafted life HOW I MADE IT 61 the cra ed life / american craft summer 2022 / forge Photos by James O. Brenner. early in his career. “Casting iron as a practice is something you can’t do alone,” he says. “You need a group. And the way people gravitate toward the big fire, it’s almost primal.” He quickly found that the pours themselves offered as much meaning as the objects he cast: “The process itself is the product.” One of Brenner’s community collabora- tions took place in 2018 at the King Center in Atlanta during the 50th anniversary com- memoration of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Working with Oakland, California–based artist collective Lead to Life, and following in the lineage of Mexican artist Pedro Reyes, Brenner melted guns from a San Francisco city buy-back program into shovel handles and plaques (it’s illegal to reuse decom- missioned guns in Georgia). King’s youngest daughter, Rev. Bernice King, delivered the first gun to the furnace for melting. The plaques created that day—as well as shovels topped with handles Brenner had poured and finished off-site in advance of the event—were used in ceremonial tree plantings at historical sites of violence in and around Atlanta. Brenner readily admits the challenges inherent in casting as an immersive experi- ence. First, most decommissioned guns are cut into unrecognizable pieces, so Brenner has to reassemble them enough for the public to read them as a symbol. He also discovered that putting guns directly into the furnace obscures the visual experience of their breakdown, so he built an addition atop his furnace to allow onlookers to witness the process of disintegra- tion from above. In the furnace, everything not made of fer- rous metal blows apart or dissolves in spark and flame, contributing to the spectacle and leav- ing only the metal pieces to drop into the fiery heart of the cupola. Iron melts easily at the 3000 degree temperatures reached by the furnace, but steel does not. So, Brenner had to add chips of iron from old radiators to supplement the mol- ten iron ladled into the open-face plaque molds. “I think if you were to calculate a percentage of how much gun metal is in the iron, it’d be pretty low,” he says. “But symbolically, it’s still there.” OPPOSITE TOP: Pouring molten iron into an open-face mold. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Finished handles—made from melted-down guns and cast iron by James Brenner and the Lead to Life artist collective—waiting for their shovels. OPPOSITE INSET: Detail of a shovel handle with the Lead to Life logo. ABOVE: Completed shovels, with handles attached, after a day of planting trees in remembrance of victims of gun violence. 62 american craft summer 2022 / forge / the crafted life Dissolve Our Arms into Ink Thomas Little of Clinton, North Carolina, is an ink maker who uses the ink he’s created in his own drawings. He also sells them under the moniker A Rural Pen. He started making inks in 2012, after deciding to revisit a childhood interest in ink mak- ing first kindled when he wrote a school report on magician and escape artist Harry Houdini. One of Houdini’s early tricks involved “turning water into wine” using the same iron and tannin chem- istry used in ink production. Eager to dive back into the alchemical world of ink, Little needed a source of iron, and his father—a part-time gun- smith—had pieces of old gun barrels lying around his workshop. Here’s Little’s process. To dissolve guns, made of ferrous metal, he places them in a mix of sul- furic acid and water, which leads to the creation of blue-green crystals of iron sulfate, known to ancient alchemists as green vitriol. These crys- tals form the prima materia Little uses to create the pigments for his inks. Next he adds tannins to the crystals, resulting in the black iron gall ink used in manuscripts for thousands of years; when heated, the mixture drives off the sulfuric HOW I MADE IT 63 the cra ed life / american craft summer 2022 / forge Photos by Thomas Little. acid and oxidizes the iron into a bold red. These two colors are known in the art world as Mars Black and Mars Red, for iron’s association with the Roman god of war. One weapon goes a long way; Little calculated that the barrel of one rifle creates 11 gallons of ink and fills 482 inkwells—enough to pen over 12,000 copies of the King James Bible. Little’s practice became a way of healing from the impact of his own experiences: “I’ve lost some friends to gun violence and always thought about how to remediate that loss and heal those wounds,” he says. “I looked to the principles of homeopathic medicine, the idea that the cause of the illness is incorporated into the cure.” Little eventually started buying guns from local pawn shops to remove them from circula- tion. When asked if drawing with ink that was once a gun impacts his art, Little explains that he does his best to forget the ink’s origin. “I like the idea that the gun has lost its power. A condem- nation of memory. I want to make it fade quietly into colors.” Thomas Little creates inks from dissolved guns. Images show the process. CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: Iron oxide pigment being washed from 45-caliber revolver. Iron sulfate crystals, the first stage in ink making, form on the gun. Red iron oxide pigment in a flask. Ampules of gun-derived red and black ink. Drawing with a William Blake quote, made by Little in red and black iron oxide. 64 american craft summer 2022 / forge / the crafted life HOW TOP: Photo by Eric Perez. BOTTOM: Photo courtesy of Combat Paper © 2016. Liberate Our Uniforms into Paper Upon returning home from active duty in the Iraq War, Drew Cameron divided his days among school, papermaking, and involvement with the veterans’ peace movement. “I had this huge need to fill a void,” says the paper artist, who lives in Iowa City, Iowa. “I didn’t know exactly what it was, but when I found paper, it just clicked.” Cameron realized the plant fibers in his own combat uniform and their encoded stories could be made into paper on which new stories could be written. Soon he began traveling the country offering Com- bat Paper workshops. “In shorthand, Combat Paper is making uniforms into paper,” he explains. “People immediately want to know why, and I think the most expedient way to understand it is that a creative prac- tice, an art practice, can help people come home.” Cameron has conducted Combat Paper workshops all over the country with veterans and civilians of all ages, and he has seen even a single workshop deeply impact participants. “The most moving thing is how, in just going through a workshop, I’ve witnessed peo- ple’s lives take a different direction,” Cameron reflects. A pile of cut-apart uniforms in Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal’s installation Conflict Exchange at the first Triennial and Veteran Art Summit in Chicago in 2019, organized by the Veteran Art Movement group. Paper from the uniforms was featured in the show, and Cameron ran papermaking workshops during its run. Uniforms being deconstructed in a workshop at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon. 65 the cra ed life / american craft summer 2022 / forge Together, participants “liberate the rag” of each uniform by stripping it of buttons, Velcro, clasps, and seams, then tear the fiber into strips and small squares. “For a lot of people that’s enough. It’s a big step,” he says. Other folks continue on to clean and pulp the fabric into fibers that swell in size in the circulating water of a Hollander beater. A Vietnam-era uniform breaks down into enough pulp to create nearly 40 sheets of paper. More modern uni- forms aren’t completely made of natural fiber like the ear- lier ones, so additional cotton rag must be added for the paper to have structural integrity. Next, the fibers are sieved from the water using a screened frame called a mould on which an empty frame called a deckle rests. The deckle creates the paper’s clean edges. Finally, any remaining moisture is pressed from the cellulose fibers that have chemically bonded to one another. “Then,” Cameron adds, “once it’s dry, it’s paper— this amazing substrate we’ve been using almost 2,500 years. A tested technology.” While the uniforms Cameron works with have stories written within their warp and weft, the paper created in workshops offers an invitation to create something new. Cameron appreciates the sense of freedom that transfor- mation generates. “Let’s make our own paper,” he pro- claims. “Let’s write our own books. Let’s host readings. Let’s make prints. There was just this potential again that started to reveal itself.” * * * Next time you’re in New York City, make your way to the North Garden of the United Nations complex, where Vuchetich’s statue still casts a long shadow. Though ver- digris has patinated the bronze with age, the sculpture’s intention resonates more than ever. And in a time of mounting collective challenges, the work of these artists offers a reminder that we have the creativity to remake a difficult past and forge a new future. ◆ jamesbrenner.com | leadtolife.org | @lead2life @a.rural.pen combatpaper.org | @combatpaper Kimberly Coburn is an Atlanta-based writer and self-professed ama- teur and dilettante. Her work explores the intersection of craft, the human spirit, and the natural world. HOW I MADE IT TOP: Photo courtesy of Combat Paper © 2016. BOTTOM: Photo courtesy of Combat Paper © 2017. ABOVE: Sheets of paper and the military uniform type OG-107 they were made from. BELOW: She Is Carrying Empty Cardboard Boxes , a pigmented pulp print by Drew Cameron on paper made from uniforms in the Combat Paper project.