Category: a day in this life

Anne Gregory-Bepler

January 2017 – March 2018

The concept and work for this installation began January, 2017. It led me to firing ranges in rural Alamance and Orange Counties, NC, to collect 5-gal. buckets of assorted spent bullet shells, some donated and some purchased. There are approximately 15,000 5-mm shells in the blanket. There is bloodied gauze in the basin beneath the bed.

The finger numbing, meticulous job of weaving and gluing these shells became a meditation on the energetic trajectory of life, its split-second destruction by a bullet, the desire to protect, the unending pain of those left behind and our memories of them.

Weekly walks in the Hillsborough Town Cemetery moved me to collect discarded family grave flowers that were separated and blown far afield by the wind. Through my lengthy gathering process, each flower and arrangement here has come to represent someone’s specific grief and love.

Through this artwork I hope to acknowledge those who have been harmed by or lost their lives to bullets, that they not be forgotten.

Seen at The Fruit, Durham, NC.