Catalog Entry from If These Walls Could Talk Exhibit, Neill-Cochran House 2020:

“It took a trip to Ground Zero for the full impact of September 11th to sink in for me. And that was five months later, when all had been leveled. Back home, while dressing one morning, I noticed my bathroom tray jammed full of toiletries resembled the skyline of Manhattan, sans twin towers.The tarnished oval tray also reminded me of that ubiquitous photograph taken on September 11th of a very still life: a tea set in a shop window, its cups and teapot covered in gray ash. You couldn’t tell if it was made of sterling or of porcelain. It bespeaks the stillness that is a consequence of utter chaos. Picasso was not an eyewitness, but like most of us, he received the news of carpet bombing of a Spanish town through the media. Mimicking newsprint, Picasso’s outrage came out in black and white, in a huge mural. Picasso said of it, “Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.” Guernica is prophetic in that it tells it like it is, in-your-face. Even now, Picasso’s masterpiece cuts through the complacency of a culture numb with violence, a society that defies the reality of injustice and death. Guernica did not change Franco’s murderous regime at the time. No hard evidence exists to prove it provoked social change. So what is art’s role in times of tragedy? I am committed to the transformative power of art in society, but it is a heavy mantle to bestow on artists. I am committed to the transformative power of art in society, but it is a heavy mantle to bestow on artists. In this age of fragmentation, it is unlikely that one individual artist’s work will have a widespread effect on peace—we have to learn to work together. John Donne was right: “No man is an island, entire of itself.” The piece is simple but complex--”just when we think we ‘get it’ the title creates a further series of visual associations, all to do with architecture and urbanism” …...it is a cry for community. Here Guernica has been deconstructed, but notice the variety of toiletries here, high and low, exotic and pragmatic. Perhaps the only good thing about tragedy is that our exceptionalism vanishes and we identify with the rest of humanity who experience ongoing tragedy, those who aren’t so alarmed by current events because they know it has long been this way. For me, painting Guernica at this very time was tough. While constructing the piece, my family experienced tragedy when my 13-year-old niece, Amanda, was killed in a bus crash. I have seen Picasso’s portrayal of a keening mother cradling her dead child. It is a pietà straight out of the Northern Renaissance, a Massacre of the Innocents from the Baroque period. We knew the harsh flash of Picasso’s light bulb that offers no illumination—in that the bus wreck attracted media coverage like flies. In copying the mural, each of Picasso’s key elements landed upon a prominent façade of a toiletry container.