Photo by John Ulaszek

Some pedestrians walking around on a warm spring day were treated to quite the shock yesterday when a school bus mounted on a flatbed rolled through Georgetown. Only, this wasn’t an ordinary school bus. The bright yellow coach was riddled with thousands of holes that could have only been caused by gunfire.

The bus, The Washington Post reports, turned heads and prompted gasps and questions about the horrific display. The sight of a school bus torn up by bullets would be shocking under any circumstance, not least barely four months removed from the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

It’s actually a disturbing piece of visual art, though, set to go on display today at George Mason University, just three miles from the headquarters of the National Rifle Association in Fairfax. The bus is the work of the Serbian-Canadian artist Viktor Mitic, a painter and sculptor who often finishes off a piece by pumping it full of ammunition. (His schlock-color portraits range from Jesus Christ to Hugo Chávez to Ronald McDonald, all outlined by bullet holes.)

Mitic created the bus, titled “The Incident,” last September after a series of gang killings in his home city of Toronto. In the context of Newtown, though, it takes on a much deeper resonance for American viewers, who got their first look at it it last weekend, when it was stationed at the First Congregational United Church of Christ in downtown D.C. as part of an exhibit of artworks connected to the Sandy Hook shooting.

To rip up the bus, Mitic invited a group of friends into the Canadian wilderness to shoot it up with a variety of firearms, including semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. The resulting wreckage is difficult to look at but impossible to avoid.

“The Incident” is now on its way to George Mason University, where it will be on display at the school’s Southside Plaza through Wednesday. Mitic will also speak about the bus this afternoon.