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Exhibit Opening Features Guns As Art

Eileen Fleming
/
WWNO

An exhibit opening Saturday features the repurposing of guns into art. It’s also a fundraiser for police to buy back guns and get them off the streets.

The show at the Jonathan Ferrara gallery on Julia Street uses all sorts of guns, and pieces of guns to show the destruction they cause. It’s called “Guns in the Hands of Artists.”

At a soft opening this week, Ferrara said 186 guns were taken off the streets of New Orleans and transformed into works of art.

“What you see before you is the result of a unique collaboration between the NOPD, the City of New Orleans and 33 local, national and international artists,”  he said.

Interim Police Superintendent Michael Harrison said some of the proceeds from the art sales will fund future gun back-back programs.

City Councilwoman Latoya Cantrell explains the deal:

“What’s being offered is for anyone who comes with a handgun, it’s $50 cash," she said. "Anyone with an assault rifle, $200 cash.”

Art at the gallery show includes sculptures made from gun barrels, pieces stored in a glass jar, and tiny faces of victims attached to bullets.

Gun buy-back programs are scheduled for October 25 and November 1.

The exhibit runs through January 25.

Eileen is a news reporter and producer for WWNO. She researches, reports and produces the local daily news items. Eileen relocated to New Orleans in 2008 after working as a writer and producer with the Associated Press in Washington, D.C. for seven years.

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