![596351_2847.jpg](/sites/default/files/content/artist-registry/images/596351_2847.jpg)
This painting was transformed on 9/11. I had been working on a series of paintings for an exhibition concurrently with a writer whose texts would be inscribed on or appear alongside selected paintings. Part of this collaborative effort was to create a triptych composed of two large vertical canvases seperated by a smaller canvas, all inspired by the stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral. The opening line of the accompanying poetic text, to be applied to the central canvas had been composed ("Eyes of the Glass / Have seen / More than yours or mine / Ever will"). Severaly days after the shock of September 11th, I realized that the Chartres triptych had to be transformed in a way that would recognize the brave and innocent individuals whose lives had been lost. The shape I had instintcively chosen for the two exterior panels of the composition resembled the Twin Towers. Methodically, I began inscribing into the paintings the names of those who had perished as their names were released on the news. The collaborating writer and I agreed that the opening textual line was eminently appropriate to the new subject and that the rest of the text should reflect the composition's transformed orientation. In the logbook of the exhibit, a viewer wrote that she found the name of her son's best friend who was lost in the towers, inscribed in the painting that shifted from "Chartres" to "New York City". Just in this reponse, I felt that through my art I had communicated with and touched someone. The exhibition was due to be hung at Duke University's "Louise Jones Brown" gallery and all of the victims of the tragedy had still not been recovererd. I am now in the process of continuing the long list of the brave innocent.