Guns and Romance Meet at Laguna Art Museum's Victor Hugo Zayas Show

Displaying guns transformed into sculptures, the on Saturday night celebrated the opening of its latest exhibition, Victor Hugo Zayas: Mi Obra. Commander Andrew Smith and Deputy Chief Patrick Gannon, both members of the Los Angeles Police Department, were on hand to help celebrate this unusual collaboration between artist Zayas and the City of Los Angeles.

The evening had a romantic tone, as the artist explained his passion and vision, tears were shed for those lost to acts of gun violence, and the artist's girlfriend recalled how she fell in love with Zayas after viewing one of his paintings.

"You wonder, as any artist," said Zayas, "what are you going to do with the work and when you create the work, does it have any meaning, is it strong enough? Then, when a night like this happens, and you're recognized by everybody, it's just incredible. Because, what it really does is it makes you think that I'm doing the right thing.

"The message is very powerful," said Zayas, "and when the message is very powerful, I think everybody listens. Somebody tonight said, 'Are you going to say something tonight?' And I said, 'Well, I really have nothing to say.' And someone else said, 'Yes, your work speaks louder than you.' And that was a beautiful moment.

"The idea of transformation is something that I think we live through," said Zayas. "Every human being does. So when you do that, you can apply it to art. If you're a person and you're always learning and always transforming yourself and your work, then you can apply it to almost anything.

"So it was a very natural thing for me" said Zayas, "to take the guns and turn them into sculpture. I didn't think twice, it just sort of happened. I made them into portraits. The message is so clear. Because guns have a certain image that is recognizable worldwide. So my task was to take the guns and transform them, and hope that I did a good enough job that people would react."

Zayas' sculptures are made from three tons of guns, which were acquired from the LAPD during a buyback initiative. According to a City of Los Angeles document, "the citywide gun buyback initiative will reward voluntary surrender of firearms, while engaging our communities towards a common goal of reducing gun violence. In partnership with the LAPD, City Attorney’s Office, LA County Sheriff’s Department, and community- and faith-based organizations, the gun buyback effort will secure 19 neutral locations throughout the city where individuals can surrender their firearms, no questions asked."

Upon seeing the sculptures, Commander Smith said, "It's fascinating to me that we can recognize some of the guns. In fact, there's a Glock inside of this [sculptural] piece."

"It's basically the same weapon as this," Smith said, as he pointed to his sidearm, "except it's been stripped and shattered and torn apart. What a great opportunity for us to get weapons off of the street and into the hands of an artist to turn into something completely unintended by the original manufacturer."

LAPD Deputy Chief Gannon said, "I heard people in the [South Los Angeles] community saying, 'There's a guy and a woman and they have an art studio. They're teaching kids art, and they have a sandwich shop to go along with it.' I said, 'I gotta meet this guy.'"

"So I drove over there one day," said Gannon, "and sat down, and the food was good, and the conversation was great. The more I went there, the deeper our friendship developed. Now, keep in mind that South Los Angeles, in the part where Victor was living, was a very dangerous area. Violent crime is prevalent there. So he was trying to do something really good. He was opening up a small business, he was opening up an art studio for kids, he developed scholarships out of it."

"Then I got to see his work," continued Gannon, "back in the larger warehouse. I was floored, I was stunned ... I had never been around anybody that creative before. And he was interested in what I did, and I was interested in what he did. Over the years, we stayed close."

"Victor approached us one day and said he would really like to do something like this," said Gannon, as he pointed to the sculptures. "We said, 'yeah, we think it is possible.'"

"We arranged things with our gun unit," said Gannon. "We took the guns from our buyback program and took them to a recycler, who shredded them down to make them legal for someone to use them for art. We gave them to Victor in barrels, and this is what he created."

Gannon said, "It's just unbelievable. These guns, which I believe are instruments of death, especially in the community in which I serve, are now a beautiful piece of art that I think personally is a tribute to the many people who died at the hands of weapons and guns."

"For me, the 4,000 victims ..." said Gannon, who paused to fight back tears. "I get emotional when I talk about it ... but the 4,000 people who have died in the streets of South Los Angeles, Victor has captured in this exhibit, and he pays tribute to each and every one of them. And I thank you for that, Victor."

Laguna Art Museum Executive Director Malcolm Warner likened Zayas' painting style to Turner and Goya, two artists of the romantic period.

"I love the way that Victor Hugo is not a fashionable artist," said Warner. "He seems to be much more in tune with the art of the past, really, to me, than with the latest thing in contemporary art."

"I love the way his paintings remind me of the great English landscape painter, Turner," said Warner. "I love that depth to his work. And other people have said that he reminds them of Goya. I think there's something very grand about the scale that he works on, the breadth of these big gestures that he makes with the paint. There's a great drama and excitement about his paintings."

About Zayas' sculptures, Warner said, "There's something magical about the way he's made these objects that look a little bit like heads and figures out of such an alien substance as guns. There must be something good about bringing objects that are all to do with hatred and violence into the context of a museum as works of art. It's a very suggestive and rich sort of idea."

Zayas' girlfriend, Anna Petrossian, pointed to the artist's large painting of the Los Angeles River at night.

"I saw that painting at Mendhall Sobieski Gallery in Pasadena many years ago," said Petrossian. "Victor and I were not yet acquainted. But I fell in love with the painting because, just looking at it, I couldn't believe how one can understand how I feel when I look at the night. That's what I saw in that painting. And since that day, I couldn't forget or get him out of my mind."