How Many More Hearts Have to Break (Before We See Real Change)?

Why are guns more accessible than healthcare, affordable housing, reliable transportation, and quality education?

How Many More Hearts Have To Break Before We See Real Change? tapestry by Ericka Leigh for Sewn Apart.

Like many other Americans this week, my heart is grieving the losses from yet another mass shooting. I don’t think there’s anything I can say that hasn’t already been said, this time or the hundreds of times before.

The answer seems so easy, the research is out there. Stricter gun laws in the US would save a lot more lives. How many more mass shootings does America have to see before we see change? How much more pain?

Also like many others, I thought after Sandy Hook, we might see stricter gun laws. Sadly, that has yet to come to fruition. I hope for the sake of all of us that change comes sooner rather than later.

Close up of bottom left corner with gun and broken hearts. Photo by Ericka Leigh.

I find the mass shootings at schools to be the most egregious. Schools are suppose to be safe environments, of learning, growing, and play. I remember being in middle school when Colombine happened. It felt so rare that a school shooting happened back then. I remember being afraid to go to school the next day in Florida, which also felt silly because Colorado was so far away that it didn’t feel like a real threat that could happen close to my home. That was an anomaly, a one off, not a regular occurrence.

Of course no one ever thinks its going to happen to them. Fast forward 15 and 20 years and there’s a mass shooting at a night club an hour from my house and a mass shooting at a high school in south Florida.

Tapestry shown from an angle focusing on the gun and broken hearts surrounding the gun corner. Photo by Ericka Leigh.

It is the 145th day of the year and there have been over 200 mass shootings in America already. Why are guns more accessible than healthcare, affordable housing, reliable transportation, and quality education?

There are so many questions and so few real answers. We already know the answers: Politicans care more about their power status than the people they were elected to serve. This certainly seems to be the case in Texas right now. And I know in my state, calling my senators or my governor will do nothing to change the current climate around gun reform. The governor of Florida has made it abundantly clear he doesn’t care about the people of our state as he has continued to strip away the rights of women, LGBT+ folx, and the capacity for teachers and students to give or recieve a quality education.

The discrimination against the Black, Latinx, LGBTQIA+, and AAPI communities, the discrimination against women, and the targeting of children is not okay. The ‘random’ shootings at grocery stores, churches, movie theaters, schools, and public places are not okay.

All of this really is preventable.

Most of the hears are made cut offs from old pants. Notice the lightness versus the heaviness of the hearts at the top and the bottom. Tapestry measures 5" x 3". Photo by Ericka Leigh.

I know everything I just said has been said before, by others on this platform and in countless other spaces. When my words fail me, I often turn to art. I am an artist and I sometimes find it easier to have these hard conversations through art than someone talking at you. My art is my voice and my power, and when I falter as a human, the artist in me steps forward. When I’m gone and my art remains, I hope this is not the conversation we will still be having.

“An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.” — Nina Simone

This tapestry is a social commentary about the prevalence of gun violence and mass shootings. Notice the gun in the bottom left corner. The hearts around the barrel of the gun are stained with coffee and dirt, this is to illustrate the darker side of humanity, the parts of us that are stained. There are red broken hearts piling up on the bottom of the tapestry symbolizing the obscene amount of bloodshed and lives lost already due to gun violence. The rainbows are in memory of the Pulse shooting and in honor of all lost LGBTQIA loved ones who have become victims of gun violence. As your eye moves to the edges of the tapestry, the hearts become brighter and whole, representing the notion that the further we move away from violence as a society, the more whole we, too, can be.

Close up of center of tapestry. You can see a rainbow, some of the stained hearts, broken hearts, whole hearts, and negative space hearts, meant to represent the survivors and the empty space left in aftermath. Photo by Ericka Leigh.

Tapestry in process, pinning hearts onto fabric and planning out placement. Photo by Manny Alamo.

Measures 5 feet long by 3 feet tall. Materials include velvet, pleather, tulle, cotton, linen, wool, polyester, corduroy, denim, and thread.

Tapestry is for sale and half of the profits will be donated to Everytown for Gun Safety.

More information available at www.sewnapart.com. And if you’d like to support in other ways, you can buy me a coffee. Thank you.