Sunday Park Bench For Parkland
Our first project is the collaborative effort of three Northwest artisans and a handful of anonymous supporters. It is intended as a gift to the people of Miami-Dade and Broward Counties in Florida. The project’s immediate purpose is to physically acknowledge the anniversary(s) of the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2018. The project will be shipped to Florida, once the gift has a home.
The final disposition of the bench is unknown. The Perez Art Museum Miami was asked to accept the bench for occasional display and long-term storage. The director politely refused the gift. Other public museums in southern Florida have either declined the gift or failed to respond to inquiries. Working classroom teachers at Majorie Stoneman Douglas have considered and then declined the gift. Several non-profits set up by families of the victims have been contacted and have either declined or not yet responded.
The issue has been raised as to whether the bench is Christian art. It is not. None of its makers self-identify as Christians, although we are happy to collaborate with project supporters that do. The piece can best be described as an editorial in the form of furniture. It forces the viewer to confront the moral corruption of conflating second amendment considerations with spiritual beliefs of any kind. It excoriates pastoral and ecumenical silence on gun worship within the larger Christian church. It asks every viewer to sit in silence and think about the courage necessary to stand and speak. It asks each of us to reflect on what is in our hearts. It attempts to burn the anniversary date of the Parkland shootings into national civic consciousness. It makes no claims about salvation, instead pointing to an absence of understanding among many who claim salvation’s comforts.
In a free society, citizens have the right to aggregate and appropriate common cultural symbols for broader aesthetic and civic purposes. The bench is an expression of that right, as much a civic as an artistic gesture. It is intended to be aesthetically and civically accessible to the average member of the general public.
The central figures are a machined-steel cross assembly and support armature composed of portions of gun barrel replicas framing a small square void at their intersection; a heart-shaped void; a Christian cross expressed as void in the seat, this angled seventeen degrees askew from the centerline; and cast silver loops of replicated barb suspended within the seat’s cross void. The central figures are set upon a pew and park bench of laminated American Black Walnut.
The project will remain available as a gift until it finds a home.