Twenty-nine years ago Mineola artist Lisa Fazio-Cotroneo spent a pleasant day with her husband sketching the skyline of lower Manhattan from the Brooklyn Pier. She would have no idea that what she was sketching would actually happen over two decades later on September 11.
“For composition reasons, I placed a helicopter in the sky and a plane heading toward the Twin Towers,” she wrote in her essay for a museum show centered around the 9/11 attacks. “Who could have guessed that a plane would affect the world so profoundly, and how innocently I rendered it nearly 20 years ago.”
Her artwork, along with only 30 other artists’ nationwide is now part of the West Baton Rouge Museum in a Cathartic Art Exhibit: “Remembering September 11.” The show runs from July 23 to September 20.
Cotroneo chose to revise her illustration out of respect for those who didn’t return, along with their families, removing the helicopter and framing the skyline with the names of all who perished.
The new piece, entitled “Gone But Not Forgotten,” “represents the collective spirit of the souls of everyone who lost their life on that fateful day,” Cotroneo said in a statement. “Each were born alone, yet died as one. The 2,762 names form the frame of the artwork. From a distance they are indistinct. When viewed up close, there is the sheer emotional impact of each individual who died.”
Her goal now is to sell 2,762 prints to honor of each persons lost that day.
A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Comfort Zone Camp to help send the grieving children who lost a parent on 9/11 to camp. Copies of the art are $65.
