In 2015 there was a mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina. A young white man had joined the bible study group and then opened fire, killing nine people. There have been many mass shootings in the United States and they are all terrible, but something about this one really stuck with me. In my imagination I could see the church group welcoming him although perhaps being a little surprised at his coming, and then the shock and terror when he turned on them. Mass shootings have become a feature of American contemporary society and I hate it. When I am upset about something it makes it into my art.

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I have a son and like most boys in this country, he grew up playing with toy guns. I found it was impossible to keep them at bay, and finally decided that at least when he was playing with toy guns, he was engaging with other kids rather than sitting in front of a screen. I have never held a real gun, but I am quite familiar with water pistols, super soakers, and nerf guns. I began a series of small oil paintings of water pistols based on advertising images and toy guns purchased online. Why oil paintings? My research revealed images of young boys posing with their “gun” collections of super-soakers spread across their lawns, and I couldn’t help but see a correlation between this pride in their power of ownership and the passion an art collector has for their collection. I titled the series “Fun Gun Collection.”

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The LaValise project is predicated on the senses, when asked to participate I was musing out loud considering all the senses I could name …sense of sight, sense of sound, sense of touch…and then my husband chimed in with “non-sense,” and that was the one that made the most sense to me in terms of my work. So, the title of this mini-series within the Fun Gun Collection is “NonSense,” since this uniquely tragic American love of guns makes no sense to me.

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JOYCE DALLAL is an artist who works in a variety of media. The themes that surface in her artwork are those of collective and personal history, community, memory, and the evolution of contemporary cultural identity. A first-generation American born in the Midwest to Iraqi-Jewish parents, her work is informed by the experience of navigating and integrating these often-conflicting identities.

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She is the recipient of several grants and fellowships, among them an NEA Regional Arts Fellowship in Photography, a Brody Arts Fellowship, and a City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work has been commissioned by the city of Pasadena, the Los Angeles Public Libraries, Community Redevelopment Agency, Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Los Angeles International Airport. She received her MFA from the University of Southern California and founded the Digital Arts Program at El Camino College in Southern California.