11-Year-Old Local Wows with His Anti-Gun Art

Art has always been a medium for social change and one 11-year-old artist is speaking up about his anti-gun stance, through his art collages centered on toy guns.

L.A. local Charles Gitnick, has been working on his gun-themed pieces for two years now and selling them on the streets, and he’s garnering positive attention from art critics.

According to an article in the New York Daily News, Charles began selling his work at Venice Beach but was then told he should try selling in New York. And that’s what he did this past weekend, raking in $1,650 selling his work on a Soho street corner.

Charles, who has been making his collages since the age of 9, and has had a gallery show in Culver City, writes on his website, “My feelings about guns are that they are scary and dangerous.  When I make one of my pieces, I create a background and then I camouflage the gun to make it almost invisible.  The gun is still there but it’s hard to see it or you don’t see it for what it really is.  Hopefully my art will get people talking about guns, gun safety and gun violence. I wish guns were only in an art gallery.”

Charles also explains his technique on his website, stating, “My art right now is all about guns, abstract and landscapes. What I do with guns is I get a toy gun and I cut out a cardboard background. Usually I use the same color or the same design as the gun on the background but for some of them I just do the guns in colors and then the back ground totally a different color. For my abstract usually I do dots or designs or just colors and squares and shapes. For landscape I usually do palm trees and the beach or sometimes I do just palm trees and the sky and sand.”

Click here to visit Charles’ website.