Artists Registry

My relationship to the World Trade Center has been serendipitous. I remember I wasn’t that impressed when they were built. I was around 7 years old when they were finished, I remember having no opinion.
In 1985 at 19, I came down from Ithaca and sold strawberries for 2$ a pint, wearing my red jumpsuit, and mohawk in front of the trade Towers…we sold out making a killing that day. I recall my good friend got fired for having made too much money. The day was very windy and ripe with possibility. We stood out with our zany outfits in contrast to the many suited up folks who zoomed in and out of the towers all day.
In 1993 I sold a first collection of works upon graduating art college, for $1200.00 on the 90th floor of tower 1. The building swayed, the elevator was scary. We could look down on the tour planes flying by. I don’t recall even saying, “wow.” Perhaps excited to shop with my cash, and to get out of there as quickly as possible.
I then moved to NYC in 1994, and didn’t really pay them any mind…never thinking they were too special. When inside the buildings I was awed by their size, simultaneously claustrophobic.
In 1996 I participated in the first ever “Art of Fire” show at the Soho Fire Museum. Showing paintings and photos of firefighters on the job, which had been instigated by my friend Lt. Mickey Kross (Who on September 11, 2001 survived the collapse in Stairwell B). I was feeling my full power as a painter of collapsed and exploding structures where naturally the FDNY was always involved. It was quite exciting riding on Engine 3 (Ladder 12/Battalion 7) to go to an emergency and find it a false alarm that January. (See charlotteg.com/photos/FDNY) I explored the art of shooting with no flash, loosely focused.
Then when 8 1/2 months pregnant, in January 2001, I attended an experimental piano concert on the grounds, the atmosphere was Magical and Beatific.
After my son was born in February 2001, I would shop in the neighborhood as a part of my postpartum therapy. Around June one day I was about to walk the 17 blocks from my house on Ludlow Street just north of Canal, and a little voice in side my gut said: “don’t go down there for a while.” So I didn’t and the buildings fell three months later.
I had no Idea when they came down that people outside of New York even knew. I was in shock and believed it to be a neighborhood event. Then my husband came home in tears. (See: 38ludlow.com/WTC stories.) I told him they weren’t going to do any thing else that day. We wandered the streets for days, shot video…and had to show ID to get home.
I ran into Lt. Mickey Kross 5 days later, after finding out he was fine, but to look him in the eye I could see he wasn’t there. I knew nothing at this point of him surviving in stairwell B. My feelings of guilt overwhelmed me and for 2 years I shot video interviewing New Yorkers, and stared at news clippings knowing I had to paint these pictures, awed by the enormity of the task.
Mickey brought me to the site, as a firefighter, a few months later, where I “sifted”through debris for one day. The special World Trade Center odor was still the rubble. The pit was a few degrees cooler than the rest of New York. Eerily awesome, I set about painting that week and tried channeling, simply putting the brush to paint with out interference. At first I cried a lot, feeling the heavy loss, and guilt for not appreciating the towers more. Then it became an exercise in aesthetics. The debris became my muse.
I feel lucky to have participated in this project, I feel right sized about it now. I feel lucky to have my friend Lt Mickey Kross alive to tell the story about living through this.
I miss the towers like a long friendship that has developed unexpectedly over time, and quickly ends where upon one has only a memory.