This is acknowledgement of our communal trauma, its aftermath and collective long view.

Hometown examination has long been a focus of my work, almost always starkly personal. This piece, Staten Island, September, is different. It's an attempt to put our experience as Staten Islanders...our collective pain, our emotional processes regarding 9/11 into a singular image. It was crucial to include the lyrical, powerful monument already in place, Masayuki Sono's Postcards memorial. Staten Island, NYC's least populated borough, lost over 270 people on September 11th, nearly 80 of them first responders, so many from my immediate neighborhood.

I struggled with the idea of embarking on a project specifically geared to one excruciating, seminal event. Concerns about appearing opportunistic, mawkish loomed...but a number of people, notably, the poet Marguerite Rivas said such an endeavor would be welcomed, and as the creator of Victory Boulevard at Dawn painted many years before 9/11, long popular for over a decade, I was a natural choice. It