Staten Island, September 40"x54" Oil on Canvas 9/11 Commemorative This is acknowledgement of our communal trauma, its aftermath and collective long view. Hometown examination has long been a focus of my work, almost always starkly personal. This piece, "Staten Island, September", is different. It's an attempt to put our experience as Staten Islanders... our collective pain, our emotional processes regarding 9/11 into a singular image. It was crucial to include the lyrical, powerful monument already in place, Masayuki Sono's Postcards memorial. Staten Island, NYC's least populated borough, lost over 270 people on September 11th, nearly 80 of them first responders, so many from my immediate neighorhood. I struggled with the idea of embarking on a project specifically geared to one excruciating, seminal event. Concerns about appearing opportunistic, mawkish loomed... but a number of people, notably, the poet Marguerite Rivas said such an endeavor would be welcomed, and as the creator of "Victory Boulevard at Dawn" painted many years before 9/11, long popular for over a decade, I was a natural choice. It's been humbling that so many are affirmed by this particular image, connecting to the degree that they have. While Ground Zero was newly smoldering, daily calls and emails came from people asking me for reproductions. I was stunned; it took a while to comprehend the reasoning. The response to my painting, "Victory Boulevard at Dawn" has been persistent... arcing from celebration and now... to mournful soliloquy. This new painting, "Staten Island, September", continues as Ms. Rivas says, "telling of the tale of our tribe". - Copyright © 2006 Zographia -