Seems like I will be going to New Orleans,... often. In addition to getting two works into the Garden District Gallery, I was invited to show a piece at the West Baton Rouge Museum. They were seeking works inspired by the events of 9/11, and this piece, entitled "In Memory" was accepted. In describing the inspiration, I wrote: "It starts with an idea. In and of itself, an idea, like a knife, can cut to hurt or cut to heal. In this work, the orb is the idea. Separate and apart, it is framed as an ideal and yet, framed and apart, it is imprisoned as an idea that has lost all it's connection to the real world.
To this day, the 9/11 attacks are still largely incomprehensible to me. As such, this work is less about the literal representation of the loss on that day and more about the struggle to understand what happened. I personally did not lose any friends or family on that day but suffered a loss, as we all did, none the less. Perhaps we will never truly know why it was thought that all of the killing would change the world but, in the end, how could all of the killing not change the world? As such, in the aftermath of any tragedy, it is important that we never forget. That we remember. In the words of George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". "In Memory", is my attempt to remember this event. It was a painful day and a stark reminder of the power of ideas. Ideas that bring about incredible beauty and unbearable pain. This tragedy unfolded, for most of the world, from afar. The sole, ghost-like image, is that person in all of us, watching and struggling to try to understand an idea.
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