I thought about the project in earnest for about a year and a half, but, if I wanted to be honest with myself, I’d have to go back to Columbine to find the source. Not that I had any intention of making art about such a thing back then, but that was one of the first shootings where children were the shooters AND the victims and when I first felt that the adults of society had really let down the next generations. We’ve let them down because of our unwillingness to talk about difficult things in a rational way or to compromise.

Each gown represents a specific mass shooting in the U.S. I don’t have enough exhibition space at WSG to have a gown for every shooting. I used my sewing machine as a drawing tool, creating a layering of the line that describes the weapon(s) used during that shooting. I shocked myself when, after many drawings of guns, I admitted how sexy they were. The lines, the weight, the way they are designed to fit into one’s hand. . .

I can’t explain exactly where my ideas come from. I collect vintage handbags and appreciate them for their lines, use of material, the way they fit into my hand or over my arm. As I started designing and building the handbags with gun imagery, I realized how much I would want to own them if they weren’t already mine. The gold-leafed bullets as sequins, and gold and silver-leafed guns on the handbags all seemed to make sense in a glorifying, distorted way.

I’ve continued my interest in using repurposed materials in this show. The acrylic is all repurposed, fabrics and materials in the purses are nearly all repurposed . . . even the evening gowns are repurposed. Initially I was going to sew the evening gowns from scratch, too, but it became important that the gowns had all ‘lived a little’, especially with the heavy messages they were being repurposed for.