On October 27th, 2011, I was invited to visit fellow artist Todd Stone’s temporary gallery & studio on the (then vacant) 48th floor of the 7 World Trade Center building.....
...as I stood looking down below onto the construction site with the 9/11 Memorial (a place that I have visited, up close, and found to be beautifully serene) a strange and eerie sensation came over me. The people, the cars and the work trucks all seemed to disappear before my eyes and were replaced by a vision of shattered glass scattered (on the surrounding streets and) where the Twin Towers once stood. And, although my eyes could see the evidence of renewal, I couldn’t shake the knot in the pit of my stomach and the dizzying feeling of the horror that once was. The people and the City of Manhattan are strong; and they will endure and rebuild taller and even bigger than before. But these Footprints (of what once was) in Lower Manhattan will forever leave their mark.
*special note on my creating this piece: I sketched and took pictures of the view (looking down on the memorial) for later reference...but...In order to recapture the dizzying/sickening memory, I would work on this painting during my episodes with vertigo>aka: vestibular neuronitis. The building on the right was the (unfinished at the time) Freedom Tower.
(I created this piece in memory of those who I know that perished on 9-11...and to those who are able to tell their miraculous stories, today, of them being spared).