Appetite for Destruction

Then there's the equally self-contradicting stereotype of the rural Midwesterner, particularly the rural Midwestern male. As outsiders would have it, he has more know-how than book-learnin'. He's handy and self-sufficient. Depending on which stereotype you're working with, he's either a brave soldier preserving everything wholesome and simple and good in America or he's drunk, armed and toothless, a racist homophobe attracted to his cousin and about to ruin everything.

So what do you do with the Midwestern artist? When he picks up his hammer, is he fixing something or is he making a piece?

And when he picks up a gun and points it at some Tupperware filled with raspberry-flavored Jell-O, should you run?

The original idea was to test, on Maclanahan's land in Kansas City, Kansas, whether Tupperware is bulletproof. But you can't shoot guns within city limits. Well, people can and do, but it's illegal.

So Ryan Gale offered his family's farm in Lathrop, Missouri — not far from the Jesse James Museum.

Gale is an artist, too. As an 18-year-old, he considered applying to the Kansas City Art Institute but was scared off by the financial demands of attending the school. So he did some vocational art — advertising, sign making and display work — before turning his dream of being a sculptor into a reality that's not so different from sculpting. Gale is a self-employed construction contractor who has teamed up with some of the city's most innovative architectural firms to work on buildings in the Crossroads District.

"I'm fortunate enough that I can work with exceptional architects on fun projects with design-build elements," Gale says. "These aren't cookie-cutter ranch houses. We're going into old buildings and trying to find new approaches to old things. There's a lot of hands-on. And at the end of the day, you've built something."

On the day of the Tupperware shoot, Maclanahan and Gale brought their own guns.

But most of the weaponry — the XKS sniper rifle for example — was on loan from the painter Phil Corbett. He's a carpenter by trade and the former manager of A Streetcar Named Desire (the Crown Center hamburger joint housed inside a train car). He's also a Vietnam War veteran. Local artists know they when they need a gun to shoot their art, Corbett's the man to see.

When sculptor Jesse Small was making military-themed art, he used Corbett's arsenal to put holes in his work. One day, Small brought a piece to Corbett's place, and Corbett told Small that he shouldn't shoot it, that he would ruin it. Small didn't listen. He shot the art anyway. As soon as Small did it, according to Corbett, Small knew it was a mistake. That's the last time Small went over to shoot art. "He quit doing it, I ate his ass out so bad," Corbett reports.

For the Tupperware test, Gale's wife, Leah, hauled to the farm some serious WMDs from Corbett's collection. The XKS was a big device with wood siding and a tripod to hold it steady. The rare XC-220 came disassembled, its metal pieces contained in a camouflaged, Army-issue case. The riot gun was intended for crowd control; hope ran high that it was up to the job of Tupperware control.

At the farm already were Gale, Maclanahan and a handful of others, including Burak Düvenci and David Moré — installation artists who wanted to capture the sound of the gunfire for future shows. They had been getting the official tour, seeing the cows and the chickens, observing the dead geese that had been hunted on the property that morning (only two per hunter, as the law clearly states) and setting up a stand to hold the Tupperware, using the tools in Grandpa Gale's tinkering shed. Meanwhile, everyone but the vegetarian in the group ate homemade, freshly harvested deer jerky, which had a disturbing rubbery texture but tasted pretty good.

The largest Tupperware bin held apples. (This was a nod to the Williams — Tell, who shot an apple on his son's head, and Burroughs, who shot his wife trying to re-enact Tell's scene.) The other four containers were full of red Jell-O. The shallow box had three compartments — one with red gelatin, one with green, and one mixed — to simulate a color wheel.

Tupperware piece No. 1: Rock 'N Serve Large Deep Contents: five apples (four Golden Delicious, one Gala) Distance: 68 yards Weapon: hunting rifle