Hearty Subculture Means No Harm -- Band Of Guerrilla Artists Just Wants To Have Fun

"You kill it. You make it," reads a sign on the wall of the cluttered warehouse of Seattle's most prominent band of guerrilla artists.

The saying is a simple variation on the age-old store warning, "You break it, you buy it," and a guiding principle for the group that's created a giant ball and chain and a knifed, 3/4-ton heart to shock Seattle residents.

For the most devoted members of FA - Fabricators of the Attachments - the Ballard warehouse is the place where nearly anything can be built from almost nothing. Old mannequin parts, Tonka trucks and sofas litter the portion of the giant warehouse the group leases. Here, their random ideas become finished products.

"When we're working together, we're having an opportunity to do something without somebody telling us what to do," says Jason Sprinkle, 25, a.k.a. Subculture Joe, the legal business leader and creative spark behind FA.

There are roughly 30 members of FA. Yesterday, hours after welding the giant, knifed heart onto Sprinkle's truck and making a hasty exit from Westlake Park, a half-dozen of the more active members gathered over unfiltered cigarettes and beer to reflect on what makes the group tick.

"We're not activists," insists Robert Shealy, even though an FA press release said the knifed heart represented the divisive threat reopening Pine Street means to the park.

"We have many burning issues," counters Virginia Rose, the woman who circulates press releases whenever the group delivers a public offering.

"Or none," says Gary Trott, a 41-year-old self-proclaimed erstwhile child anarchist.

Through all the joking and contradictions, the group agrees on one simple point:

"There's no malice in anything done," says Sprinkle, sitting in an old-fashioned salon chair, his head in a hair-drying helmet.

"It's about fun."

Sprinkle and a few friends - artists most, welders some - first got Seattle's attention on Labor Day, 1993, when they dropped a 19-foot ball and chain on the Hammering Man in front of the Seattle Art Museum. Last year on Valentine's Day, they delivered to Westlake a "heart for the unbeloved," one you could take a sledgehammer to.

Yesterday, after a day of peaceful negotiations with the Department of Parks and Recreation, Sprinkle and company hauled away its second heart, this one with a knife through its center.

Sprinkle estimates the heart and knife included more than $700 in sheet metal. Other parts were collected from scrap. And members pitched in everything from spray paint and hours of labor - more than 500, they estimate - to batteries to power the group's radio while they worked.

While the group scrounges for parts and cash, members aren't short on organization. They consult a lawyer when they fear crossing swords with the city. And they've got copies of detailed press releases for every stunt they've pulled.

They say they have no plans for another stunt. But on the heels of their latest guerrilla attack, Trott had one telling thought.

"I would have liked to have seen it run slightly better."