(static hissing) - [Announcer] If you want to know what's going on.

(upbeat funky music) (boat horn blowing) (water splashes) (cat meows) (birds chirping) (audience applauds) (car horns honking) (static hissing) (gentle music) (torches sparking) - I am Diana Garlington.

I'm the mother of Essence T Crystal who unfortunately I lost in a drive-by shooting in 2011.

Once this happened, they gave her a number on a list as an unsolved murder homicide.

She's not just a number.

Her name is Essence.

- I'm Scott Lapham.

I'm an artist and an educator.

Four of my students were lost to gun violence.

One Gun Gone came about as positive response to the idea that so many people were taken out of our lives by gun violence.

So I wanted to have a space that literally and figuratively could talk about how we felt about gun violence.

Since I'm an artist and a visual artist, the idea of having an art project made the most sense because having an art project is a way to have a conversation.

We wanted to make a project where the art is more valuable than the gun.

And then also to have Diana Garlington, an anti-gun violence activist, now involved in the programming itself, she was learning welding.

She was there every week talking to young people.

- It took an unfortunate circumstance in order for me to change my lifestyle.

Unfortunately, that changed November 26th, 2011.

- The only rules that we have in One Gun Gone is that we don't glorify guns or gun violence, and when we hold the sculptures, we hold them like with two hands open.

When you hold it like this, you can have a different relationship with it.

Now we can look at it, we can think about it.

We're not acting as we're conditioned to.

We're conditioned to pick this up and use it as a weapon.

- I already know it's a firearm.

I already know it's a dangerous instrument, but it it like to have that in the steel shop and to present it and pass it between each other in that way was just reminds me of and is sobering to what we really are holding.

- Before the students even see one of these weapons, it's decommissioned.

And that starting point then has the culmination of them being used in a sculpture, a metal sculpture, a metal fabrication welding where that weapon then becomes a part of that sculptural piece so that it has a different function.

Art is a different use.

This was a gun, but now it's a sculpture, and when you guys transform it into a sculpture, it's gonna talk about how you feel about gun violence.

- Losing Essence shattered my home.

(machines humming) Those windows broke.

(hammer tapping) Pieces of the floor begin to fall apart.

And that is what led us to my project.

(inspiring music) (torch sparking) These young men are prospering from this program just by being here.

They could be anywhere right now.

They could be out on the streets doing whatever, but they choose to be here.

- The youth is just us over and over again.

We are reflections.

We see them, and they see us.

Without these kinds of outlets, I don't see peace being very viable.

- It definitely helps someone like her to see that there is something in the world that isn't just all wrong.

(inspiring music continues) - I think it's changed like my perspective a bit more from hearing like Diana's story and Scott's story about like how gun violence affected their lives.

- I've always just thought of art, like you take a crayon or a marker and you draw something.

You know, I never would've thought that you can take an actual piece of something metal that affected lives and then bring it out to beautiful work of art.

Essence's legacy is to change lives.

It's just, you know, the beauty of knowing that people understand.

- Art is a different way of communicating, and it's a language.

Sometimes that's about beauty, and sometimes it's also about other things that need to be confronted to then understand beauty.

- Art is healing.

It's healing.

"Wake up, little Providence.

Don't get caught slipping or taking that ride because you may be added to that number and labeled unsolved homicide.

(silence) (upbeat funky music) (water splashes) (cat meows) (birds chirping) (audience applauds) (horns honking) (static hissing) - [Promoter] Watch more "Art Inc." A Rhode Island PBS original series now streaming at ripbs.org/artinc.