Tower And Hole - Patricia Spears Jones

Reading an introduction to the poetry of Hsieh Ling-yun may seem like an odd way to start to look at Rhonda Schaller's drawings of the twin Towers and their absence, but here's the quote:

It is difficult to think of the World Trade Center as anything other than secular. Built to house many people and to help them make money, lots of money, one could not think of them in such sacred terms. And yet, a combination of sacrifice and hatred struck them down and now the Great hole where the Twin Towers once stood is called "sacred". Death can make Temples of Mammon, holy in these strange days, which is why Schaller's works are both equally disturbing and comforting.

Her ease with form, with the forms of the towers, a living and breathing interaction of line, color and nerve are on display here. They capture a dream scape, a living memory, the sense of absence and an aching desire to declare rage against the evil executed and those who have so clearly caused so much pain that such evil was done.

Rhonda Schaller does not shrink from the horror of September 11 and the despair those events have caused, nor does she fall comfortably into the "we must rebuild, renew" go on with our normal, everyday lives" sort of response so prevalent as we go on with our lives. She's an artist, a mother, a healer, a lover - there is no normal, there are more questions and her drawings dare the viewer to begin to ask why the Tower, why this Hole. Why others seek and create light, she searches the dark spaces, those spaces where a group of men with God on their side can pilot planes full of moms and dads and children into buildings as if it was to create a perfect paradise. Their deaths and the deaths they caused were carried out on a cosmic scale and these drawings demand to be seen from that vantage.

These drawings capture the outlines of commerce - the square boxes in which money desired, money made, money lost meant more than anything else. Money as fuel. Money as power. And yes the perfect symbols. They also capture the heartlessness, the detachment of moneymakers. They also capture the energy, dynamism, the verve and the loss of verve that the destruction of the Towers wrought. But more than anything, they question our desire for such symbols, our comfort in them and our disbelief that death would surround what once stood at the edge of Manhattan.

Her palette is muted, grief stricken really. The palette of widows' weeds. It is only with the larger, later panels that the palette grows, stronger, with softer colors as if despite her rage and sadness, some small drop of hope, optimism, illumination cannot be contained.

Schaller's work does not try to heal or gloss over or exploit the images of her neighborhood now so horribly disfigured by death and sacrifice. What she brings to viewers is a challenge to see again these forms, to see how they haunt us and how they many have hobbled our capacity to see the consequences of our actions in a larger world and now on a cosmic scale. The universe has shifted, just ask any New Yorker about the weather. We are in a crisis of the soul and the destruction and death made manifest on September 11 may simply be the opening salvo in a long fight for how humanity is defined over the next century. "Freedom" Justice" Sacrifice" "terrorism" are all different ways of talking about power, who will have it, share it, keep it, loose it. The interaction of the forms within Schaller's panels is at the beginning of this difficult conversation.

Of course, what can also be said is that thee is an elegance, a relentless faith in beauty that rises from these pieces as if Schaller's own humanity will let her make the world that she needs to make to make sense of the what is often deemed 'senseless', her spirit is troubled but her art is confident. She is a downtown artist whole life has been deeply involved with the very ground that now hosts a huge chasm. And no matter how horrible the sight seen on September 11; no matter how awful the air; no matter how worried she was about loved ones near and far; and no matter how convinced she is of a great darkness descending; beauty is key to her spirit and the spirit of this work. Our creativity is but interaction of despair and hope on a great cosmic scale and Schaller has the courage to show us that beauty is the force resulting.

Patricia Spears Jones
Catalogue essay; Darkness and Light April 25th 2002
Copyright March 2002