A new art exhibit, “Neither Swords Nor Plowshares”, is on full display at the Cerritos College Art Gallery, beginning Sept. 13 and ending Oct. 14.
The art show adopts the concepts exerted by the biblical saying, “turn your swords into plowshares”.
This is the idea of the reconstruction of destructive weapons into common tools, which are much more civilian and innocent.
The artful pieces demonstrate this notion, along with the reverse perspective: the conversion of common tools into weapons.
They also express the much broader contemporary interest in simulation by turning one material into another with a radically different purpose.
Nasreen Sarvi, a Psychology major, said after observing the show, “The art was really strange, but in a very interesting way.
“The ways in which the artists made one thing from something else totally different are amazing,” Sarvi said.
These transformative presentations are what make this exhibit truly unique.
Each artist’s manifestation of the show’s concept is creative in its own manner.
A quintessential example would be the feature piece of the show, “The Trigger Finger of Santa Guerra,” by artist Al Farrow.
The piece is a reliquary, which is a religious container of relics used by some cultures.
The piece also has a twist: it is constructed almost entirely of real guns and bullets.
The odd takes on these traditional items are meant to make the audience question the relationships between the object beforehand and the product after its reworking by the artist, and how relative their uses really are.
Other prime examples include a homemade sentry turret: an entire tool kit complete with a worktable, made of nothing but paper and cardboard; and even a full replica of a 19th century British colonial cannon constructed completely out of paper-mache’d Iraq War documents.
“Neither Swords Nor Plowshares” is filled with innovative pieces of this nature.
James MacDevitt is the director of Cerritos’s art gallery and the curator of this particular show.
“I don’t want to see art as this isolated, independent discipline, but rather something that actually confronts the issues that we all deal with, living life in this contemporary, mixed-up world.
“I try to get a variety of artists to explore those ideas,” MacDevitt explained.
The north section of the gallery holds a small secondary three-person show called “Simultaneous Inversions.”
This exhibit showcases a handful of creative pieces that play with light and shadow.
“Neither Swords Nor Plowshares” and the smaller “Simultaneous Inversions” are open for viewing daily Monday through Thursday from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and every night Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
