Souls Shot Exhibition Gives Gun Violence a Human Face

Lisa Harmon, mother of Alan Christopher Gray, aka Fresh, with “Forever Fresh,” the portrait of her son painted by Elisa Abeloff. Photo: Stefan Roots

Painter Helen Mangelsdorf had no personal connection to the subject of her first portrait of a victim of gun violence, Brandon Baylor. “I did the portrait of Brandon based on photographs,” Mangelsdorf says.

The second time around, though, the connection was more personal.

“My mom was living at White Horse Village,” recalls Mangelsdorf, who grew up in Swarthmore and taught art at Swarthmore-Rutledge School for 23 years, until her retirement last June. “And one of her nurses was Michelle Roberson, the mother of Bianca, the girl I painted this year.”

Bianca Roberson, 18, was getting ready for college when she was killed in the summer of 2017 while driving her car on Route 100 in West Goshen Township. A man in a truck, with a gun handy, shot her in the head in an apparent act of road rage.

This time, painting the portrait was even more grueling for Mangelsdorf. “I felt like I was doing it for Michelle, who I knew...and for my mother, and for Bianca.” She based the portrait on a graduation photograph, but she kept many photos of her subject in her studio as she worked. These included baby pictures, as well as pictures of Bianca with her brother, Mykel, who died of a heart attack in 2013. Bianca and Mykel were Michelle Roberson’s only children.

Mangelsdorf had experience making art to address trauma. She was abducted and raped when she was twenty, and art was part of her healing. “I painted portraits of the women in my support group and made shallow boxes with images of what their rape experience had been like. So I knew how powerful portraits can be.”

The Project

“Bianca Nikol Roberson: Her Light Eclipsed,” by Helen Mangelsdorf.

Mangelsdorf is one of 28 artists participating in the third iteration of the Souls Shot project, which connects artists to the families and loved ones of victims of gun violence for the purpose of painting their portraits. The project memorializes the victims, while also calling attention to the breadth of the United States’ gun problem. Individual by individual, the portraits present the vibrant faces of the lost.

The project was started by artist Laura Madeline in 2017 and only intended to last a month. But so many places asked to exhibit the portraits that the show traveled for a year, including to the state capitol in Harrisburg. This iteration of the project — the third — is on view at the Swarthmore Presbyterian Church (SPC) through February 29.

“Artwork blazes a very specific trail in the hearts and minds of those who experience it,” Madeline said at the exhibition opening on January 31. “We wanted to make use of this powerful medium to address the issue of gun violence.” She said that Souls Shot is often compared to the AIDS quilt, which similarly memorializes lives of people often blamed for their own fates. “These souls did not deserve what happened to them. Moreover, these families are not afforded the outpouring of sympathy and outrage received by victims of mass shootings.”

Madeline cited statistics about gun violence in the United States. Between 2013 and 2017, 310 people were shot, on average, every day, according to the Center for Disease Control. Of these, 100 died of  their wounds.

Seeking Accountability

The most wrenching part of the evening came when Lisa Harmon spoke. She is the mother of Alan Gray, who was shot on September 29, 2018, in Philadelphia, and died the next day. “I am a mother of four,” Harmon said. “I still say four.”

Working in the emergency room at Temple University Hospital, Harmon believed she had seen everything. “But to see your child there, and be unable to bring him back,” was something she never expected to experience. “In my area of Philadelphia, things like this don’t happen,” she said.

Harmon spoke about her son — his smile, his four children, how he loved being surrounded by family. She wants her story, and the stories of mothers like her, to be heard by people with power to change gun laws. “We have to hold the politicians accountable,” she said. She expressed frustration with the lack of attention to gun violence. “The same way  there’s a focus on the opioid crisis, there needs to be a focus on this gun violence,” she said. “There are solutions out  there.” But she expressed skepticism that any would be coming soon.

Gun legislation in Harrisburg was blocked by the Republican majority in the Pennsylvania legislature in 2019, as it was in earlier years.

Sara Cooper Searight, Associate Pastor at SPC, brought the Souls Shot exhibition to Swarthmore. She had seen it at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill and thought it would be a good fit for her congregation. “We have a lot of members who are very interested in the conversation around gun violence,” she said. The church has partnered with the Chester Community Coalition, Heeding God’s Call, and other violence-prevention organizations.

Several local politicians attended the opening, including Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer, Chief Deputy District Attorney Tanner Rouse, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (PA-5), and Swarthmore Mayor Marty Spiegel. Five of the artists who painted portraits were there as well: Madeline, Ann Hartzell, Laurie Lamont Murray, Garth Herrick, and Mangelsdorf.

For Mangelsdorf, teaching art to children was, in part, a way of trying to create a world with less violence and pain. “People are cruel sometimes,” she says. “[T]eaching...is just the opposite.”