 It was a cold rainy evening last Friday when my friend Pam and I headed out to the Heinz Chapel. We wanted to view a touring art installation from Chicago that I was told would open at 6 pm. The announcer mentioned that the artistic fabric wall, on this the 6th anniversary of Sandy Hook, would be representing all the children and others who have died from gun violence since then. The wall continues to grow and Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life victims had been added.
I’d been suffering with a cold for several days and was aware standing in the rain might not be the best self-care, but my dedication to the power of art to heal caused me to try and be there. We couldn’t find much information online. The chapel’s website listed an unnamed 6 pm event and a 7 pm Interfaith Memorial for Local Victims of Gun Violence. We assumed the two events were connected and decided to arrive at 6 pm.
We found a few people huddled at the front door of the chapel with parcels at their feet. One of them, a woman, introduced herself as the artist and said that her fabric wall was around the corner. She whispered for us to come into the vestibule so
we could talk out of the rain. She was suffering from laryngitis and struggling to speak loudly enough. A man inside the chapel halted her entrance saying he wasn’t finished rehearsing and that we couldn’t come in. By now a couple more women had joined us so we put up our umbrellas and walked around the corner to experience and discuss the art. We were told that earlier
 in the day children from several different elementary schools had participated in a “Schools Say Enough Sidewalk Challenge!They had written the names of victims on the sidewalk with chalk but the rain had washed away the results of their efforts. I remember thinking, if only it were that easy to erase the aftermath of the gun violence.alk-challenge The artist introduced a filmmaker who had come to Pittsburgh at his own expense and a woman reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She interviewed the artist as we encircled them and each other with our umbrellas. The filmmaker asked me to repeat into the camera a comment I ‘d made about the installation. “Reminds me of the AIDS quilt,” I said. “My son was diagnosed with AIDS and died of it towards the end of the pandemic. At that time we knew the individual cost of AIDS, but as the quilt grew and toured the country, by representing each individual, it allowed us to experience the extent of it, and that helped our communities to heal.”
The artist thanked us for coming and we went into the chapel to participate in the InterFaith Memorial for Victims of Gun Violence sponsored by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, https://momsdemandaction.org/
CeaseFirePA , https://www.ceasefirepa.org/
Students Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, and Everytown Survivor Network.https://everytown.org/studentsdemand/
 Politicians and representatives of the sponsoring organizations gave short speeches and the names of local victims were read out loud. We celebrated with the Pittsburgh City Council and the Mayor’s office who had just that day, jointly sponsored bills for Pittsburgh to ban assault type weapons, prohibit some types of ammunition, and allow police to seize weapons from people posing an “extreme risk” to themselves and others. It was encouraging to learn how many organizations locally and nationally are working on this critical issue and the only odd discord was the lack of mention of the artist, her organization, Schools Say Enough or the art installation.
Later, searching the Internet for several days, and my hometown paper’s various editions, another note of discord emerged when I found no mention of any of the events of the evening – the art installation, the memorial, or the issue of gun violence. By Wednesday there was a front-page article reporting the backlash from gun rights advocates to the gun regulations. I did learn the artist’s name, Jacqueline Von Edelberg,https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.edelberg
and was able to watch her TEDx talk.
 Thank you Jacqueline for helping us not only honor the victims of gun violence, but to do what only art has the power to do – to connect us with all of our senses, elicit our emotions and help heal them, and implant in our psyches the determination to take actions with others to do the hard work of repairing our world.
Wishing everyone a peaceful and grace-filled Christmas and New Year,
Sheila
P.S. Thank you Pam for going with me and capturing these beautiful photos.
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