Jezreel Weapons

                

 

Over the summer of 2013 I had the thought of reconstructing weaponry. It was like it thwacked me over the head, I was reading through Isaiah 2:3-4 (below) about turning swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. The modern equivalent to a sword is a gun. We don't use pruning hooks but we do use shovels and rakes. And the idea blossomed from there. Initially it was just a new way of reinforcing the idea of Shalom, an active, prevalent rightness with the Lord and with people as described in Genesis (Eden) and here in Isaiah.

      

However it became clear that this, as a body of work, wouldn't hold up for long. There were only two components, the gun and the shovel it was beaten into. Together they would merely say "make vegetables, not war" and it would go into the ocean of M-16 guitars and trumpet guns. Thus there needed to be a 3rd element.

I realized that ideologically taking a weapon used for destruction and molding it into a tool for bearing fruit is very much like what God has done to me through Jesus. I, like Paul (as we'll soon see) or any other Christian for that matter, was once against God and bent on evil. However, He chose not to destroy me but rather redeem me for His purposes. This is the gun-shovel in essence. Visually, I also discovered that covering the surface of the sculpture in ornamentation would add texture and depth (see work of Kris Kuksi). The viewer could see the initial shape, add the gun + shovel, then move in closer for a third element. So I eventually made military spolia into fruit-bearing tools with relief carvings of stories of redemption. The testimony of Paul and the story of the cracked pot that watered flowers adorn the clay pieces.

It was also around that time that the sculptures' preciousness, the fact that it is a religious thing, and "let us go up to the mountain of the Lord" sounds an awful lot like a pilgrimage brought  me to the  conclusion of making these items into relics. The texture is there in the adornment and detail, the story is there in the overall shape (the narrative relief was redundant), and it gives off the idea of sacred.

            

 This peace we all want cannot be reached by ourselves. Only in Christ can this be achieved. Only in Him can we bear fruit. Thus the title of these pieces collectively is "Jezreel" or "God sows".

 Many peoples will come and say,“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

   to the temple of the God of Jacob.

He will teach us his ways,

    so that we may walk in his paths.”

The law will go out from Zion,

    the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

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He will judge between the nations

    and will settle disputes for many peoples.

They will beat their swords into plowshares

    and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not take up sword against nation,

    nor will they train for war anymore.

Side notes: I remember pointedly that never had I ever more wanted shalom and the Kingdom to come than after the gun violence of Sandy Hook. 

I own three guns. I am not against owning them per se. A part of living in this world of sin and death is having to kill animals to eat them and having to protect your family from harm. I pray for the day when any offensive weapon will no longer be necessary.