Depicting tragedy
Local artist find ways to pay tribute to the heroes and events of Sept. 11

By Cathie Viskjo 
staff writer

The Sunday Times - March 6, 2002


  In the six months since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and staggering loss of lives, the art world has responded to the World Trade Center tragedy by offering solace and support.
  Art galleries and museums across the nation are hosting exhibits centered on the themes of heroism, patriotism, the human spirit, faith and freedom.
  Locally, artist Angela Barbalace of Hamilton was invited to participate in a New York City show sponsored by the Society of Illustrators. A member of the Garden State Watercolor Society and the Philadelphia Watercolor Society, she was one of 603 American artists selected to participate.
  Titled "Prevailing Human Spirit," the exhibit was held recently at the Society of American Illustrators in New York.
  Its subtitle read: "A memorial exhibit to honor the heroes and humanity demonstrated in the wake of the catastrophic events of 9/11/01 by the victims and families, and those who now risk their lives daily, and our courage as a nation to persevere."
  The display took up the whole first and second floors, Barbalace said.
  After the invitation, Barbalace didn't think of anything else. At the end of October; she went to Manhattan and traversed the city instinctively, with no clear subject in mind. She photographed different subjects.
  "They have memorials, at Penn Station. People still put flowers there. Peole wrote letters and poems there," said Barbalace, a computer engineer for the state of New Jersey.
 "I would think of things and put them down on paper. I went to the library to do research, she said.
  Memories of watching the tragedy unfold on television resurfaced.
  "I had acquaintances who worked at the World Trade Center. They were missing," she said. "That second plane went into the tower like a knife in a piece of cheese. I started to cry. I relived it all over again.
  "I knew why I was doing this art. It was different feeling from doing any other kind of art. When you're doing art jobs, you're pressured. But here, I was depressed, "said Barbalace.
  Ultimately, delving into her personal experience led her focus on the New York City firemen who heroically lost their lives while desperately trying to save others.
  "In the summer, I go to New York and paint in Central Park. A lot of times, I'm sitting on a bench with some firemen. They come to the park and eat their lunch outside. They're always really nice and interested in what I'm doing. They're just regular guys," she said.
  Barbalace thought primarily of their families. "I wanted to help the family members, she said. She created a 9-by-12-inch mixed media illustration that features 25 firemen flanking each other from various perspectives. "There is watercolor and colored pencil. I used oil and acrylic. I used whatever I needed to come to the finish," she said.
  "There firemen standing in front of the remaining structure. I wanted it to be a crowd of them. They're small but detailed, and they're all in black with yellow stripes. Some have the oxygen tanks, but not all of them," she said. "There are 11 tombstones, a symbolic reference to the 11th day of the month, in the foreground swathed in purple and black. The background is a gray and blue sky, I was using tissue paper and a matte finish and the colors of the flag drape the structure."
  Barbalace, who has a master's degree in illustration, feels good about her artwork. "I was hoping it could give somebody relief, I just tried to do my best," she said.
By contrast, Manhattan artist Michael Amter still finds himself unable to paint a realistic rendering. It remains hard for me to focus on work and the life lived before Sept. 11," said Amter, whose parents live in Belle Mead, N.J.
  Amter has two abstract works of art on view in a show that opened last week in Washington, D.C. The show is being sponsored by the Meridan International Center, a nonprofit institution that promotes international understanding through the exchange of people, ideas and arts.
  Titled "True Colors-Meditations on the American Spirit, " the exhibition is expected to travel worldwide.
  Amter created nonrepresenational mixed mdeia artworkds that use simple abstract diagrams to convey his sense of pain, because he was too shaken to do anything realistic.
  "For me, I found it very difficult to confront the actual issue of the tragedy," said Amter, who had a studio in lower Manhattan. His nonrepresentational images became hieroglyphs of grief.
  "To put it simply wouldn't hurt so much ," said Amter.
  To him, the most moving images were the fliers that family members distributed looking for loved ones missing following the attack.
  "They expressed the true loss of the event," said Amter, who works for NBC in the special-effects department.
  He was one of 60 Americal artists who participated in the show that will be in New York City on the first anniversary of the tragedy.
  "I was invited to submit artworks through the Lower Manhatan Cultural Council, located in the lobby of 5 World Trade Center," he said.
  The council is a bridge between local arts projects and the business community.
  Last August, Amter visited the 91st floor of the north tower to check out a residency program offered by the council. "It was so far from the ground. It felt so unnatural to be at that height," he recalled.
  He decided not to request studio space there. As fate would have it, another Manhattan artist, Michael Richards, was working in his WTC studio when the hijacked plane hit the building about 8:45 a.m.
  The cultural center's 15 employees were able to evacuate before the tower collapsed, but the organiztion's equipment, files, artwork and archives were lost. (Art losses from the terrorist attacks totalsed more the $100 million in the collections of 400 companies, according to ARTnews magazine.)
  "My wife used to work (at the World Trade Center) in the 1980s and early 1990s," said artist Eric Fowler of Trenton, a board member of the Society of Illustrators and former New York resident. He teaches art at the Pennsylvania School of Art and Design in Lancaster, Pa.
  "I stared at the TV set all day long. It did look like hell," said Fowler, who could relate the events of Sept. 11 to earlier imagery in his art. In the mid-1990s, Fowler had treated the theme of hell in a monumental series of 50 paintings, illustrating the regions of the netherworld as Dante described it in "The Inferno."
  "My jaw dropped," he said. "Several of my paintings were about seeing hell. And I had used the image of the glowing decomposing skyscrapper to represent the Titans who wanted to overthrown heaven... And here was hell happening in front of our eyes, and we were powerless to do anything, but just stare in disbelief."
  In response to the attack, Fowler decided to create a reflective piece, something more heroic, because his Inferno series so eerily prefigured the actual catastrophe.
  He went to New York City and went down to Greenwich Village and walked around.
  "There were these spontaneous memorials. People were writing notes, leaving candles and flowres and photos of missing loved ones," said Fowler.
  Fowler decided to paint the Washington Square Arch.
  "The symbolism was a mixture of things. Through the arch you can see this huge white cloud in lower Manhattan. There is a neo-Italianate church with a cross to the right of the arch. And there is an American flag at the bottom," said Fowler.
"There is a statue of George Washington on the front of the arch, and people had hung American flags there. At the base of the arch, there are directional yellow signs with arrows on them for motorists," said Fowler.
  It's more of a reflective piece, he said. "Figuratively, I felt that this is how I was now.... We've all been able to digest this with perspective.
  "I felt it was symbolic, " Fowler said. "You can go either to the left or the right of the arch, but you can't go straight through it anymore. It was as far as I could get psychically, conceptually and emothionally."