From guns to gardens to healing the Earth
Craig Kaviar’s sculpture, forged from firearms and a few garden implements, is dedicated Sunday at Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church
LOUISVILLE — “Healing the Earth,” Craig Kaviar’s 6-foot metal sculpture that transformed firearms and a few garden implements into a healing and handsome piece of art, was dedicated Sunday at Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, during a 30-minute service that included music, prayer, and brief talks from some of the people involved in the project.
“This isn’t going to reduce violence in Louisville, but it does give people hope,” Kaviar said during the dedication, held in bright sunshine in the plaza outside the church, where with people ringed his creation. “My vision was the kind of movement we are part of, this grassroots movement. There are groups like this all over the country.”
Kaviar divulged one of the secrets for this particular piece of art: a beachball that featured the world’s land masses.
“I am not an expert mapmaker, but I bought a beachball with all the continents” on a ball the same size as what he envisioned for “Healing the Earth,” he said. He blew up the beachball and traced each continent, then transferred those to a piece of steel.
Members of Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church donated garden tools “so they could see their possessions in the piece,” Kaviar said. The plant emerging from the globe is a favorite theme of his, he said.
Guns to Gardens Louisville, which holds safe-disposal opportunities at least twice each your for people who want to rid themselves of firearms — turning them instead into art, jewelry, garden tools and household items — began eight years ago in the adult Sunday school class at the church. It has dismantled 124 guns during its safe-disposal events over the past few years.
Lucy D. Steilberg, a retired public school teacher who helped teach that Sunday school class, said that following the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, “I had spent many sleepless nights thinking about how I would get my first-graders into a bathroom” if a shooting occurred at their elementary school.
When interest in forming a local Guns to Gardens chapter began to grow at the church, “I said, ‘ladies, none of us has ever held a gun. What do we know about guns?’” Steilberg said. “But they had a vision, and Craig has been here at every event.”
“We tore down the guns, and he made this sculpture,” she said. “I am so grateful they had the vision I didn’t have.”
“This is a beautiful emblem of peace for the community,” said Holly Wallace, president of Guns to Gardens Louisville. “It’s easy to buy a gun but it’s hard to dispose of one.”
That’s where Guns to Gardens comes in, Wallace said. “Anyone who brings us a firearm knows it will never be resold and never used in an act of violence.”
“Everyone who brings us a firearm has a story,” Wallace noted. “Your sculpture holds all their stories.”
During her welcome, the Rev. Tami Recob, pastor of Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church, said “Healing the Earth” stands “as a testament of what can happen when instruments of harm are reshaped into instruments of renewal.”
The church’s choir sang “Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace,” and the local band Mundo Brew provided music before and during the ceremony, helping those gathered to sing David Mallett’s “Garden Song.”
Recob prayed to close the ceremony, thanking God “for this moment, for this gathering and for the shared hope that has brought us together. As we dedicate this sculpture, we ask you to bless all who will pause here in the days to come.”
“May this sculpture stand as a reminder your Spirit is always working, turning brokenness into new life,” she prayed, lifting up prayers “for healing in our communities, an end to gun violence and for the strength to be peacemakers in word and deed.”
Recob thanked God for “the Earth you have placed in our care, that we will honor it as the home we share with all the inhabitants of this world.”
“Send us out committed to justice, and guided by your vision of a world made whole,” she said before “Garden Song” was sung and those in attendance were treated to refreshments and a how-to display Kaviar assembled to explain his work, which he’s been doing for four decades.
The 226th General Assembly in 2024 — recognizing that gun violence profoundly impacts the nation's children — voted that every PC(USA) congregation take action of their own, such as promoting secure gun storage, taking part in the Guns to Gardens initiative, or praying for the emotional, mental and spiritual health of children growing up in an era rife with gun violence. Learn more here.
Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church is among the PC(USA)'s Earth Care Congregations. More information about the program is here. Learn more about gun violence protection efforts by Presbyterian Peace Fellowship here.
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