Rising from the Ruins

I began this as a way to deal with my own shock and horror and pain. I grew up in New York City and lived in lower Manhattan for 23 years. I worked in the World Trade Center. I loved the city. Lower Manhattan was my home.

I began with a wooden box and then tore headlines and images from the Honolulu Advertiser. I wanted to create a memorial, an altar, to September 11th. That’s all I really knew.

Even before I began this piece I had a vision of a painting. I saw the ruins of the World Trade Towers and I saw thousands and thousands of angels ascending from the rubble, each cradling one victim, rising to heaven. I wanted to capture this “rising” in this piece. The phoenix that rises, transformed, from death and destruction.

I worked with broken stained glass and grout, broken ceramic, black paint, black glitter, silver sequins, and thin copper and silver wire.

But what really brought this piece to a deeper level for me, emotionally, was including the names of as many victims as I could find on the Internet. When I printed them out the list came to 24 pages. I reduced the font. Then the list came to 12 pages. I cut out the names in large and small blocks. I read the names as I cut. I read the names as I pasted. I read the names as I painted.

Richard Morgan, 63, Glen Rock, NJ
Eric Allen, 41, New York firefighter
Staff Sargent Mandaly A White, 38, US Army
Michelle Ann Nelson, 27, Valley Stream, NY

I made sure every name was visible although you have to look carefully to find some. As I looked at the names, I thought about who they were and how they died. I wanted to honor and acknowledge all the victims – and their families, too, because the families are the ones who have to go on now, day after day, sitting across from the empty chair at the dining table or sleeping beside the empty spot in the bed.

Yet amid all this tragedy, amid all this broken glass, twisted metal, dust and ash, amid all the loss and pain, a powerful spiritual essence emerges, and rises, transcends and transforms. The white doves at the bottom are charred and trapped but as they ascend, they become purified, and in the end, they emerge whole.

That is my prayer for the families of the victims. That is my prayer for the people of this nation. That is my prayer for the world…

That collectively we rise from the broken glass and twisted metal, from the untold suffering and destruction. That we rise, like those doves, purified, transformed, and whole.