SHARDS
SINCE CHILDHOOD, my art has been about trying to turn something terrible into something wonderful. So, it isn't surprising that this tendency would turn up for me again in the aftermath of 9/11. I lived just a short walk from Ground Zero. What has stuck with me most, even more so than "falling man" or the planes crashing into the buildings, is the shards sticking up into the air in the months that followed, like a bouquet left on the doorstep of our collective memory. The mangled metal shards strained against a quickly changing, color-coded social landscape. To my eyes, they formed an image as iconic as Washington Crossing the Deleware or Raising the Flag At Iwo Jima. And my challenge —my need, I suppose— was to turn it into something I could not only live with but something I'd actually want to live with.
