I’m a painter of the space with life described on rectangles of canvas. So, what do I know? But my visit to John Colle Rogers is an interesting story; more interesting than rectangles of canvas. Because what John does with a rectangle is another thing entirely -and it’s a wonder.

The room is inhabited by sculpture stands mounted with gun parts in mismatched pairings welded and aimed or broken in knots and twists. They are odd. They are animated. They are instruments of strange music.

He also made a number of rust and steel, shot-at, thin-walled cubes. Three inches on each side. He does this work in an Oakland Fabrication Studio. They present as a step parade of small, dark boxes along a wide wall of the gallery.

Because small pieces always encourage viewers to come close, I went right up. Close enough so the cube frames the inverted blister forms that converge at an opening to the interior. Each unique wound drawn by the brutal elegance of a bullet. It is a simple narrative of powerful force applied to metal objects. The event: triggered at close range. The target: cold steel and geometry. It yields an exquisite violation of form.

Dark thoughts took me away from a well-lighted gallery; away from a slurry of conversations I didn’t quite hear; the people I don’t know. What would this modern-day spear do to human flesh? Mine is twice pierced with a wide flat sheen between the eyes. All innocence and a blunt protuberance on the opposite face.

I think there should be a memorial wall for children harmed by guns. Imagine a box appearing at the moment of gunfire to catch a bullet and save a child. The bullet remains and in its enclosing darkness rattles like a toy. With this violent birth it goes quiet and leaves to build a wall of terrible markers; dark, silent, and dignified at last.

This is fertile soil already tilled. It is a fantasy. Unrealistic. Impossible. A wish.