Day 24 of Art Every Day
Title: “we all die, we all live on…in photos and paperbacks. and if we’re lucky, we’re coming back“
Song: Far, Mother Mary
On September 11th, 2001, debris from collapsing World Trade Center knocked over a giant sycamore tree that had stood for nearly a century in the churchyard of St. Paul’s Chapel. Sculptor Steve Tobin used its roots as the base for bronze sculpture next to Trinity Church . (wikipedia)
I didn’t know what the sculpture was til I got home and looked it up. The funny thing is (well, not so funny) is that we ended up walking over to ground zero after the church. I hadn’t been there since 2002. I looked at the hole in the ground from across the street and decided to walk over to where the names are listed. I figured, six years have passed. I can look at all that without crying now. I went over, found Pete Ganci’s name and stared at it for a little bit. Then I was accosted by several people selling souvenir photo albums of the world trade center burning, crumbling and falling. I just looked at them…part of me was horrified, part of me was saying ‘did you expect anything different?’ I remembered coming there in 2002 and there were tons of people selling videos of the collapsing buildings, enlarged photos of people jumping, newspaper replicas and WTC ashtrays. Nothing has changed. People still want to make a buck off of tragedy. I don’t know what irks me more; the people selling the stuff or the tourists who buy it all up.
We walked away from the site and headed to Tribeca to get some lunch. I didn’t look back. I’ll probably never go back there until everything old is new again.
When I got home and looked up the origin of the sculpture, it was like a sign telling me to forget the profit makers. The idea of the tree getting new life as art made me smile.
The tree root thing is very cool.
Sad about the people hawking grisly wares but as you say, the dimwits who buy the stuff are really to blame.