Artists Registry

The NPR announcer interrupted the music to say a plane had hit one of the World Trade Towers. Having lived within blocks of the Towers for years, I assumed it was a tourist plane flying too low. I had the bad luck to turn on CNN just as the second plane hit.

Frantically trying to reach Dan, my husband, at work, I watched the disaster worsen. The first tower fell; people were running for their lives. I was nearly hysterical by the time my husband called. One of Dan’s best friends worked in the Towers. Dan’s mother lived downtown and we couldn’t get through to her or any of our friends by phone.

The World Trade Towers had been my subway stop, with numerous little underground shops and a florist cart I had patronized. Artists in my loft building used to roller-skate with their kids in the evenings around the fountain off of Church Street. My husband had inspected Windows on the World, the restaurant at the Tower’s top. I had hand-lettered signs in both towers, including former Governor Mario Cuomo’s door. This was my neighborhood that was destroyed.

It took me two months before I could visit “Ground Zero.” Overwhelmed by tour buses, crowds and souvenir vendors, my friends and I walked towards the Hudson stepping over chunks of metal and debris. We wended our way through lesser-used streets, leaving tracks in the grey dust which coated everything.

Back home, my once-brown shoes were still covered with the ashes of everything and everyone incinerated on the 11th. Scraping my shoes with a palette knife I mixed the dust into my oil paint; I began painting what I had seen. Many weeks and tears later, I framed the painting in a plain pine box. The piece is entitled “Missing,” after the hundreds of heartbreaking signs posted at the site by people searching for loved ones. I painted my own likeness on one of the signs because I knew that as for so many others, part of my life had vanished forever.