In February, artist and inker Thomas Little loaded up his van and traveled across North Carolina to paint 20 delicate, solitary vignettes of American landscapes, each representing a city in his home state that experienced at least one mass shooting in 2023. .
By their subject matter alone, the paintings of water towers, traffic signs, and brick facades are a subtle but harrowing visual record of violence in the US, portrayed through a sense of absence and loss. But the unexpected source of Little’s colors makes her scenes even more potent: The pigments are made from chemical compounds from firearms, taken out of circulation and dissolved in Little’s workshop.
For more than five years, Little has performed this type of alchemy, buying pistols and automatic rifles at pawn shops and dissolving the heavy parts of iron in acid to form iron sulfate, the base for writing inks and artistic pigments in deep blacks. , rusty. warm reds and ochres. As the son of a gunsmith, this practice is something of a birthright for him, but completely subversive as it transforms objects of violence into materials of expression.
Ink is a nebulous material, Little explained in a phone call, made of almost anything rich in pigment along with the binder gum arabic. It can be made from gathered berries, leaves, and minerals, but Little became interested in making iron-based inks (the standard for many centuries) from ferrous parts of firearms. By mixing iron sulfate with tannic acid (which Little obtains by cooking the sumac plant), the ink acquires its deep hue, which darkens on the surface of the paper once exposed to oxygen.
“I’ve always liked chemistry and I really liked the history of ink, and (since) my dad was a gunsmith, there were always a lot of gun parts lying around,” Little said. “So it was a matter of practicality to use those pieces. But then I realized how powerful it was to take a gun and turn it into writing material or art material.”
As an illustrator and animator, Little often felt that the goal of his practice was eluding him. But turning guns into ink has given him a sense of purpose.
“In my opinion, it feels like a recovery process for society and it has this wonderful, magical, transmutational (aspect) to it,” he said.
‘Haunted’ landscapes
Traveling through North Carolina, Little felt that the scenes he painted, each depicted with gun remains, were haunted. (Little did not paint the exact locations of each shooting, considering it “too grim.”) The 20 cities were home to 33 mass shootings last year; The term is defined as a shooting with at least four victims injured or killed. – and they are just a small percentage of the 656 nationwide. Nearly 43,000 people died from gunshot wounds across the United States in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive database.
The ink maker has felt the profound impacts of gun violence in his own life. One of her close friends and animation mentors, Helen Hill, was murdered in New Orleans in 2007 when a stranger entered the home she shared with her husband and her young son and shot her in the middle of the house. evening. Her murder was never solved.
“It just left a huge hole in me and in his entire family…in his community,” Little recalled. “It was just a huge shock. And it took me years to really figure it out.”
For him, making ink is not just a refuge, but a small way to help balance the scale of the lives that have been ended by guns.
“Ink is a kind of necromancy. “The dead speak to us through ink… through documents from hundreds of years ago,” Little said. “There is a bit of poetic justice in using the instruments that silence people, who stole (their) voice from the world, to preserve a voice for the future.”
Using the ‘iron rainbow’
Little’s ink manufacturing remains a one-man show in Sampson County, a rural agricultural part of the state. Recently, he has broken down a .45 Beretta revolver, a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, and an AR-15. It produces its standard liquid ink for sale in larger batches (selling around 2,000 bottles in total as of late 2022) and works on commission to manufacture the more time-consuming black, yellow and red pigment powders that require other processes. and ingredients. Red, for example, requires roasting iron sulfate; Yellow, the most delicate shade, is the result of mixing iron sulfate with an alkali such as baking soda. Everything requires patience.
“I don’t really have a clear formula for (yellow),” Little said. “Sometimes I do it by accident and it turns out well. “A lot of what I do is look at old jars and see what happens inside them after a period of time.”
Working strictly with Little’s pigments means working with a limited palette, what he calls the “iron rainbow” of black, red and yellow. Blue would involve cyanide gas, something Little admits he’s not prepared to try (“I’ve been tempted,” he said with a laugh), and while he could make white from dissolved bullets, it would be a dangerous lead-based white gas. , so instead incorporate a white tempera paint or chalk to highlight.
Because of the time and labor involved in making the pigments, Little only produces them in “special batches” for the artists who seek them out.
One such creative is Christina Kwan, an Atlanta-based painter and muralist who often works with acrylic ink, creating meditative compositions involving spills, splatters, and calligraphic brushstrokes. Kwan reached out to Little directly on Instagram to ask about the possibility of purchasing a much larger quantity of her gun ink than she normally produces; Until now, she has used her standard inks in her practice, experimenting with them as she considers the implications of them within her work. Like Little, she is drawn to the process because of its ability to transform an object manufactured for violence.
Kwan says he is concerned about gun violence in the United States, especially after the birth of his son. With his practice based on calligraphic brushstrokes, he became interested in trying Little’s inks. (Christina Kwan via CNN Newsource)
“I had a son in 2020, and since becoming a mother, I still dread the day when I have to talk to him about how to prepare for a shooting… in public or at school,” Kwan explained in a phone call. “It just feels like it’s somehow out of your control, no matter what you do. Maybe there is an element of this feeling as something I can control,” he added of using gun ink, “and hopefully make some kind of meaningful art with it.”
Chicago-based Korean-American artist Aram Han Sifuentes echoed similar concerns around keeping her son safe, particularly as hate crimes against Asian Americans increased in 2020 and remain a concern. Han Sifuentes, whose practice is based primarily on fiber-based pieces, has been working on the effects of gun violence for the past year and asked Little to make red pigment from an AR-15 for an upcoming exhibition in the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia. . Just two ounces of the material has allowed Han Sifuentes to dye a huge 9-by-35-foot expanse of fabric, she explained in a call, and she had some left over.
“It just speaks to the power of this material,” he said. “But I also like that as a metaphor. “It’s like gun violence in the sense that this little thing can do a lot and it’s very powerful.”
Little credits the artists he works with for helping him understand the importance of his ink making, as he said he often gets caught up in the day-to-day process without as much time to reflect.
“I often have to make another batch of ink, you know, just throw this gun into the acid,” he said. “That’s why it’s always nice to hear what artists think about what I’m doing and why it’s important to them.”
He has also heard from people who have lost loved ones to suicide and want to transform the weapon they used to end their lives. Since Little is also restricted by the weapons he can accept (particularly for out-of-state requests), he is also willing to teach the process. That includes workshops he’s been invited to participate in, and he happily calls himself an “open source wizard” when it comes to making ink from weapons.
“I have no corner in this market… I will guide your hand, I will show you the way. I don’t have a problem with that and I love teaching people,” she said.