Community Corner
Area Artists Reflect on Sept. 11
Three artists speak about how 9/11 influenced their work
We turn to music and art when words cannot hold our grief, confusion, sorrow. After the towers fell, and as the shared suffering filled our home, my jazz guitarist husband turned to our piano and played pieces from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier — "Bach is perfect," he said. Chaos held sway outside our back window; Bach spoke to order, to the best humans can be.
It is Bach that will be played at a service in lower Manhattan's Trinity Church this weekend. On WNYC, listeners to public radio have been asked what they need to hear, and if responses have varied — from Bartok to Bruce Springsteen — it is the outpouring of write-in and call-in responses that holds the key.
This weekend, places of worship will be filled with music. In Montclair on Sunday, Sept. 11, there will be a free and open to the public program of music and spoken word at the First Congregational Church, 40 Fullerton Avenue from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Actor Frankie Faison, a board member at West Orange's Luna Stage Theater, is among those on the program and will join choral music by Schola Cantorum on Hudson and works by many area musicians, including students from Jazz House Kids.
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Another of the evening's performing musicians is Montclair-based pianist, big band leader and composer Diane Moser. Diane was among the handful of artists who shared with me some of their responses to 9/11. At the time, Moser and her group were performing monthly at Tierney's Tavern. She and her musicians turned their September, 2001 evening into a fundraiser for the Red Cross.
Moser and her band's alto saxophonist Tom Colao performed John Coltrane's powerful composition "Dear Lord" at the "Evening of Hope" service at Montclair-Kimberly Academy that and in subsequent years. The two will be playing it this coming Sept. 11 at First Congregational.
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For Diane, there was also composing: "I wrote a big band piece called 'The Journey Home' in memoriam for 9/11, with Mark Dresser as soloist," Moser said. "We premiered that in November 2001, and played it again with Mark in December of 2001. Since then it has been in regular rotation on our program."
Like many other visual artists, initially West Orange ceramic artist Lisa Westheimer could not work. Then, the works came trickling in:
"Here are some works I produced during that horrible time when America's collective heart was broken," Westheimer wrote in an email. "I couldn't make any art for the longest time, until I got my feet back under me. The first image is of two glass plates I made containing strips of copper. They were the first things I made after 9/11.They slid together in the kiln and fused together- Siamese Twin Tower plates. Luckily they separated easily. The next glass plate is entitled 'In Memory of Danny Pearl' which I made just after his kidnapping, when he was missing and presumed alive. I remember that his young wife was pregnant with their first child at the time of his capture and that evoked the mother and child imagery in the piece."
Artist Gayle Mahoney lives in Montclair and is the director of education at the West Orange/Orange Valley Arts District's Arts Unbound, a wonderful not for profit organization that offers support, classes and opportunities for differently-abled artists to sell their work. Gayle shared her thoughts:
"The events of Sept. 11, 2001 had a significant impact on my practice as an artist and the content, style and substance of my work. In the immediate aftermath, like everyone, I struggled to comprehend what had happened, and turned to my work as a way to process the incomprehensible," Mahoney said. "I felt compelled to do work on how the commonalities in all people span cultures, religions and regions."
"I began making clay figures in a style similar to Cycladic figures that were once placed in tombs to accompany the deceased into the afterworld," Mahoney said. "The figures related to the loss of life of 9/11, but also touched on our need for human connection and companionship. There are so many stories from that day about strangers forming bonds in the face of death — I thought very much about that as I was working on the figures. I have made hundreds to date. Each one is unique and has a name that represents something universal about human experience. I call the series 'Tribe of Immortals.'"
"After 9/11, there was a very deep need, almost desperation, for a shared, outward expression of emotions that we couldn't verbalize," Mahoney said. "I believe that is the same sort of place that all truly compelling artwork comes from."