Twenty years ago, I made this drawing. It came out of an assignment given in my freshman year at Alfred University. As I recall, the instructions were to make a drawing from things found in nature. I remember going to the woods behind campus to find a spot along a path to draw the trees using decayed bark, mud and berries, and anything that would make a mark on the paper.
Looking back, I had no way to understand and process what had happened in the hours after the towers had fallen. That afternoon in the woods with my hands in the dirt was the most grounding thing I could do on that day of complete and utter helplessness. Thank you to the professor who assigned it, perhaps Nick Tobier, but I can’t be sure. Each year, when the anniversary of 9/11 comes around, I think about this drawing. I was only 18 and naive in many ways, though I didn’t know it (do we ever?), but when I look at this drawing, I see a glimpse of the person and artist I would later become.
That was a day of immense loss; the depths of which wouldn’t become clear for years to come.
9/11/01 Drawing, 2001, Decayed bark, mud and berries, 30” x 22”