SWD 45

An allegorical gun-rights, gun-terrorism sea monster, with memorial portrait of Wanda Walters, 61, a circulation service assistant library employee slain in a terrorist attack at the Clovis-Carver Public Library, New Mexico, August 21, 2017

Art: 2021
Media: Ink, gouache, colored pencil on paper, rubber stamps. See text below with more description of the items and things attached to the frame and on the drawing.

The frame size: Height, 18.5 inches; width, 23 inches; back to front, 4.5 inches

Walters, and a librarian, Kristina Carter, age 49, were shot to death in a mass shooting terrorist attack. The perpetrator was a teenager with a handgun. The library is in Clovis, New Mexico, a city of more than 38 thousand residents. Walters was born February 6, 1956 in Merkel, Texas. Her survivors included a son, a daughter, and three grandchildren.

~

Ms. Carter, whose nickname was Krissie, was a librarian; she worked with the library’s youth services age group. She was born June 24, 1969 in Mountain Home, Idaho. Her survivors include her husband, two daughters, a son, and a granddaughter.

~

“We never thought for a moment she wouldn’t be around to keep the air light and playful” -Chelsea Jordan, Krissy Carter’s daughter, as reported in a February 19, 2019 online news article, newchannel19.com (Amarillo, Texas).

~

Three library patrons and another library employee were also shot; those four victims survived.

The library employee who survived was age 30 at the time; she worked in circulation services. The younger patrons who survived are brother and sister; he was age 10 and she was 20 at the time of the terror attack. The older patron who survived was age 53 at the time of the attack.

~

Some pieces of paper are attached onto the drawing paper, including a piece of a library barcode label; an early 1980’s Seattle Public Library due date card; and a book spine- label with a printed call number from a discarded Seattle Public Library book; an info due date card from a discarded Queensborough Public Library 33rpm record.

~

A metal rod from a discarded pre-computer-era SPL wood library card catalog drawer is mounted on the right side of the frame. Of the wood frame: The bottom front looks like a pre-computer-era wood library card catalog. When I bought the frame at a thrift store it had a mirror in it, which I removed and replaced with plexiglass.

~

Also mounted on the frame: A postcard size wood frame inset with a 1983 SPL due date card. Another small postcard - sized wood frame has a due date info card from (a discarded) Queensborough Public Library 33rpm record (which I bought from a sale table of discarded library items during a visit to a branch at that library system back in the 1970’s or 1980’s).

On the outside surface of the wood frame: I mounted 14 picture tiles from a children’s game; a metal plate with 3/8 MADE IN U.S.A incised in the metal; a box of Crayola crayons; 2 plastic checkers pieces (from a family set of my family and my childhood) and 2 dice (also from a family game set of my own family, of the 1950’s-1960’s); and a Seattle Public Library circ desk peel off sticker (for patrons): I Love the Library – Seattle Public Library. 
~
Of the Queensborough Public Library due-date info card that was inside the ‘book pocket’ of a 33rpm record that had been discarded from the Queensborough Public Library record collections: When I was visiting my parents once during a trip to NYC (I forget what year, it would have been most probably in the mid to late 1970’s or early to late 1980’s) I visited my now late mom when she was at work. She was a librarian at Queensborough Public. I bought a book and a record from a sale table at the branch she was working at; they were library items that had been discarded from their collection. 
~

As of March 2021 I’ve depicted 12 victims of America’s gun genocide in 11 different artworks in the Sight-seeing with Dignity human rights art series. I’ve also depicted a French Muslim victim who was working in London one summer between university terms; he died in a terrorist attack at a tube station in London. Other terrorism victims I’ve depicted include two Jewish Israeli teens and 2 Palestinian teens, and 2 child victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without end. Visit the Sight-seeing with Dignity art gallery in my website. 


~
Art © A K Segan