Making Beauty From Deep Sadness
Topic: ART NEWS
Making Beauty From Deep Sadness
This week, Americans everywhere will pause to commemorate the 13th anniversary of the Sept.11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In Rosemead, city officials unveiled a sculpture memorializing the nearly 3,000 people who died that day.
The sculpture consists of an iron beam pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center held up by two stainless steel hands.
"That steel beam represents the American spirit," Rosemead Mayor Steven Ly said. "Even though it suffered a lot of damage that day, it's still there and still strong."
The hands holding it up are constructed from 2,976 individually crafted stainless steel doves - each representing a victim of the attacks.
Artist Heath Satow said he spent nearly five months laboring over the hands, providing him ample time to reflect on the lives lost that day.
"What I hadn't expected going into this was what a toll it was going to take mentally," Satow said. "I was dealing with death and loss 2,976 times."
Though the city has been raising money and anticipating the memorial for years, of the five members of the City Council, only two have seen the sculpture in person - Bill Alarcon and Sandra Armenta.
Armenta said the sculpture was a reminder that the nation will never forget those who lost their lives in the attacks.
"I tell you it was breathtaking - it was so emotional," she said. "The two hands, for me, holding up the steel beam just proved...we will always rise above that."
The sculpture has already been placed in its home near city hall, where it is being kept under wraps until its official unveiling.
Councilwoman Maggie Clark, said it will remind people of the importance of staying vigilant.
"My feeling is we need to do it so we don't ever forget," she said.
"I want to wait until the day," she said. "To me, I think its an honor to have that memorial in the city of Rosemead. It allows us to honor...the many who lost their lives."
The $60,000 memorial has been built entirely through donations.
Some see doves. Others are certain they are looking at hawks. Still others are convinced the small figures they're seeing represent angels.
That's a good thing, says the sculptor who has created a memorial to victims of Sept. 11 . Nearly 3,000 of the stainless-steel figures are welded together to create a pair of giant hands lifting a twisted steel beam from New York's World Trade Center.
"I didn't want to be too specific. I want the viewer to bring their own ideas to it," artist Heath Satow says of the 4 1/2 -inch symbols that represent victims of the 2001 attacks.
Satow spent five months in his downtown Los Angeles studio bending and welding the bird-shaped figures together to form the two hands that hold the rusting, 10-foot section of I-beam.
The reaction of those who have seen the artwork is generally the same, Satow said.
"You get the 'Wow, that's neat,' when people first see it," he said. "Then you get the 'Whoa' when they get close enough to see that it's made of thousands of birds."
Rosemead officials commissioned the sculpture, called "Reflect," two years ago when Satow was operating out of a workshop in nearby Alhambra.
Satow chose the I-beam from a catalog of World Trade Center artifacts maintained by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Rosemead parks director David Montgomery Scott arranged for the Port Authority to release the 500-pound beam to the city.
Satow said he came up with four potential sculpture designs, which were narrowed down to two and voted on in mid-2010 by Rosemead residents. They overwhelmingly chose the design with the two hands, said city spokeswoman Aileen Flores.
Flores is one of several city officials who have seen the finished sculpture at Satow's Santa Fe Avenue studio. "It's better than I could imagine, absolutely beautiful," she said.
City Councilwoman Sandra Armenta, who has also seen it, said the artwork suggests "in a breathtaking, emotional way" that Americans will rise above whatever befalls their country.
The $60,000 art project was financed with donations and money raised by events including spaghetti dinners and food booths at the city's concerts in the park, 5K runs and the sale of memorial bricks, Armenta said.
Satow, 41, said each of the bird-like figures was cut from 1/8-inch steel by automated lasers and then polished, bent and welded by hand. "It's the most labor-intensive piece I've ever done," he said.
"It was really heavy creating each bird, knowing that it represented a real person. It was taking a toll — I was getting really depressed working on it."
When the piece was unveiled, Kevin Danni, who was on the 55th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center when the second hijacked plane crashed into it.
"We were in the stairwell, evacuating. I'd been on the 61st floor at a training session with Morgan Stanley. We were slowly heading down the stairs. Luckily, it was an orderly evacuation. It took us probably 45 minutes to get out," said Danni, 31, an investment advisor from Pasadena.
About 12 minutes after he left the tower, it collapsed as he looked on in horror from several blocks away. He ran to escape the wall of dust and debris that followed.
"My whole 300-member training class survived. I got a second chance at life. It's a gift," he said.
Danni has also had an advance peek at Satow's sculpture. "It's incredible — a great tribute to people who lost their lives," he said.
And he knows what the tiny figures that form the sculpture are. "They're doves. There are 2,977 doves there," he said.
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