Artist Alton DuLaney couldn’t be mad that University of Houston officials censored his gun art from an exhibit at the Blaffer Art Museum — they basically made his point for him.
Despite the fact that students will literally be sitting in English class with loaded guns on them in just three months, apparently DuLaney’s exhibit, showing an unloaded revolver with a cartoonish banner that says “ART” protruding from its barrel, is all too threatening right now. Unlike private schools, UH is required to implement the new campus carry law slated to go into effect this August whether it likes it or not (from the looks of its restrictive campus-carry proposal, it doesn’t like it). But even if DuLaney’s exhibit went up in August while students were packing heat on the sidewalks, the UH Office of General Counsel has, interestingly, said that DuLaney’s gun art still likely wouldn’t have been allowed. (Yeah, we’re still waiting on the office’s further explanation for that.)
Now, the ART banner is the only item behind the glass, but DuLaney said the gun’s absence may say more than its presence: “It proved my point about how controversial this object was,” he said.
DuLaney had planned to make a statement about the power of guns by juxtaposing the revolver with the “bang” comic-book-like graphic that says “ART.” That cartoonish element reminded DuLaney of how guns are so omnipresent in Texas culture that, even for kids in this state, toy guns are part of growing up. He was wondering: If he transformed the gun to look this way, would it still have as much power? After UH’s decision, the answer was, well, apparently yes.
“There’s an obvious implication of power that this thing has, that this inanimate object has when combined with ammunition and intent to create damage,” DuLaney said. “So I wanted to create a piece that said all of that, but that was diffused by being cloaked in a statement of art.”