While the Twin Towers might have crumbled on Sept. 11, the image of the two skyscrapers will survive through the work of visual artists.
Coping with the disaster mentally, emotionally and spiritually, local creators have begun to address the tragedy with their craft.
For Luis Pratts, carving a wooden sculpture of a WWII veteran in a red, white and blue hat was a way to release pent-up tension and pay tribute to the nation’s loss. The figure is holding the Twin Towers in one hand (which are angled to form a "V" for victory) and pointing toward the fateful sky with the other hand.
Pratts intends to exhibit his work at the upcoming Jersey City Studio Arts Tour in the Victory Hall venue, as well as an exhibit that the Fleet Bank branch on Exchange Place has expressed interest in housing. The Jersey City tour takes place Oct. 20 to 21 from noon to 6 p.m. at various downtown galleries, artist studios and other areas throughout the city.
Pratts, an active member in the Jersey City Arts community, used the same method for this new project that he does for his other pieces, which is finding a household object or discarded item and sculpting a human figure out of it. For this new piece, he used a piece of pinewood that he found outside Dickinson High School, where he teaches a welding class for adults at night.
Immediately following the attacks, Pratts and his wife, Becky, sat in front of the television set for a long time like most people. But the next day, he felt like he needed an escape from the ongoing reports and turned to his in-house studio for a diversion. "I was feeling down and depressed," Pratts said. "I decided to go to the back and start working on something."
He designed the sculpture with old-time veterans in mind that he often came across as a child growing up in Manhattan. At first, he said using the Twin Towers as a theme made him uneasy. "I said I’m not going to do something on the World Trade Center because people are cashing in on it and I felt funny doing that."
But finishing the project delivered some peace of mind. "After that, I felt pretty good," he said.
Pratts also plans to begin a painting that he sketched out on a pad with a pencil. The image is a close-up of two eyes with the Twin Towers in the reflection of each eye. A crown of thorns adorns the man’s forehead, signifying that the eyes belong to Jesus. By mixing the Twin Towers with patriotic images and religious symbols, Pratt said his work expresses the current emotions of grief and hope that the nation is experiencing.
As a part of the Art Tour, a photography exhibition focusing on the World Trade Center attacks will be held on the top floor of the Jersey City Library’s main branch on Jersey Avenue.
Peter Zirnis, the vice president of Pro Arts – an organization of local artists who promote art in Jersey City – plans on exhibiting a picture at the tour exhibit that he took of the Hudson Bergen Light Rail when it was being built. At the bottom of the vertical picture, steel rods stick out of the tracks as the World Trade Center stands tall on the top half of the photograph. Because of the Polaroid film he used, the colors are shifted, he said, making the sky a greenish-blue with yellow-orange clouds.
People have expressed interest in this photograph previously, and the image has gained a fresh purpose. He took 10 of these photographs originally, and had sold one to a woman two years ago. He received a call from the woman after Sept. 11 to tell him how people that saw his photograph in her house were impressed by it.
Zirnis’ specialty is environmental photography, in which he documents his surroundings through photographs. Although his first reaction was to grab a camera when he heard what was happening, something stopped him. Since then, Zirnis has struggled to come up with a way to capture this historic event by using his brand of environmental photography that documents his immediate surroundings.
Trying to solve this problem, he has bounced around many ideas on how to handle the issue. "How do we focus on just the World Trade Center itself?" he wonders. "Do we limit ourselves to the tragedy there? Do we open up the show to discuss the ongoing war and the issues of terrorism or cross-cultural understanding?" The answers have not come to him as fast as the questions.
Kathryn Klanderman, president of Pro Arts, said that art concerning the World Trade Center tragedy is bound to emerge in Jersey City because of its proximity to the event. "There’s a need for us to give voice to our feelings about this," Klanderman said.
For some people, turning to art was a natural instinct, even if they did not normally create it. That was the case with Frank Gigante, owner of Hoboken Iron Works, who built a tabletop model of the skyline in wrought iron in his shop. Gigante and his two employees watched the incidents unfold on Sept. 11 at the shop on Hague Street in Jersey City. They immediately closed their store.
"When we came in the next day," Gigante recalled, "we were moping around and couldn’t help thinking about it." At that moment, Gigante saw two pieces of wrought iron and noticed that they somewhat resembled the Twin Towers. Finding other pieces of scrap iron in the shop, Gigante, Fred Diaz and Mauricio Mendez spent a few hours each night for the next three days polishing, buffing, and welding a Manhattan skyline and an accompanying iron display table to place it. Gigante named it "The Shadow of New York," because people are constantly thinking about the Twin Towers right now, he said.
"I never really did any art before," he said.
He added that he would like to donate the piece to the New York Fire Department or simply New York City. "I grew up looking at them being built, and to see them come down, it’s very hard," Gigante said.
Pratts, who lives near the iron shop, dropped in to see the iron sculpture and enjoyed the piece so much that he asked Gigante if he would be interested in submitting it for the exhibition at Fleet Bank. According to Zirnis, that exhibit is still "up in the air." But if it occurs, Gigante said he would be happy to showcase his piece.