Community Notebook

The Artists Strike Back

“Time has to pass before artists can apply their own brand of healing,” playwright Athol Fugard recently told the New York Times. He was talking about an artistic response to the devastation of September 11. It is a phenomenon witnessed in times of tragedy, such as the Holocaust and the Armenian massacre, and now known as “the art of the aftermath.”

Chronicling the creation of local art since September 11 is the objective of Jennifer Lucene and Heather Denton, who have already filmed 25 Woodstock-area painters, musicians, poets and actors for a proposed documentary to be called Creative Retaliation.

Lucene and Denton are newcomers to the Hudson Valley from Los Angeles, where they worked tech in TV and film, ranging from “Freaks and Geeks” to Mission Impossible II. They moved East to rent a house in West Hurley, perched on 55 acres overlooking the Ashokan Reservoir. They came flush with idealism, eager to find an alternative to power lunches and Hollywood glitz. “Woodstock blew my mind—this supportive artist community where everyone in town was an artist,” Lucene enthuses, with the guileless enthusiasm of a twenty-something once steeped in West Coast living. (Denton is the more reserved of the pair.)

The women were still unpacking on September 11, Lucene recalls, “when we saw the world blow up.” A week later, while volunteering for the Woodstock Film Festival, they met several artists, “painters who hadn’t been able to pick up a paintbrush since it happened, because they were so freaked out by it and didn’t know where to go emotionally,” Lucene explained. But these people also spoke about the ache in their heart and belly that urged them to create art that would provide not only illumination, but catharsis in the wake of the terrorism. Lucene, who was scratching out a screenplay for a romantic comedy, pushed it aside. She raced to Denton with the idea for a new project.

“What we wanted was the immediate reaction of the artists, right when it happened, when everyone was walking around in a daze,” Lucene said. Loaned a digital video camera at the film festival, the longtime friends began to seek out artists for interviews. In a tight-knit community, word of the novice documentarians spread, and one interview led to yet another.
“I just kept letting the camera roll,” Lucene said. “It just got bigger and bigger and bigger.”

The responses to the attacks were as varied as the types of artists interviewed. Some dove into the political significance of the tragedies, some its spiritual resonance. Painter HongNian Zhang, who had survived Mao’s bloody reign, depicted an angel in front of the World Trade Center, holding red, white and blue flowers in a benevolent offering. Reggie and Kim Harris composed and recorded a song in the style of Negro spirituals and worksongs, drawing from her days of helping rescuers at Ground Zero. Painter Lex Latsky’s output was angry and deliberate—his signature American flags are now painted on tabloid newspaper covers trumpeting the casualties in lower Manhattan. Musicians Ingrid Sertso and Karl Berger composed and performed a dark jazz piece called “9-11.” Eric Crittenden of The Waz, a rock band, found music offered no solace. The band appeared at a New York City club a couple of days after the 11th. Performing for a nearly-empty room, they were unable to summon up their usual stage brio.

A month after the attacks, Lucene and Denton accompanied photographer (and Chronogram editor) Lorna Tychostup down to Ground Zero. It was still an immense wound in the earth, spewing smoke. But tourists had gathered to watch the recovery, as had street vendors, hawking American flags and World Trade Center guidebooks, lending the site a “museum-Disneyland” quality, Denton said. Walking through the streets, Tychostup, normally an aggressive photojournalist, was unable to extract her camera and record the suffering. The crew captured the conflicted moment.

Some artists were not aware of the impact the events had on their work. Richard Segalman usually depicts the immense landscape of human relationships, painting men and women in pastoral scenes. However, his works since September 11 are dark and monochromatic, the happy couples now somber, peering out windows from a city apartment. Segalman was oblivious to the shift in tone until his printer pointed it out. Sculptor Jonah Meyer’s most recent work is dominated by two narrow pieces of wood standing side by side. Unconsciously, he had recreated the fallen towers.

As Hollywood veterans, Lucene and Denton have no illusions; they know the success of their project rests on the participation of some prominent names.

On their wish list are well-known local residents Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, David Johansen and Kate Pierson of the B-52s. They also plan to return to artists interviewed in the days after the attacks, to document art that might have taken shape as the shock began to recede.

More than 25 hours of footage in the can are being whittled down on Lucene’s nonlinear editing system at home. The women also are scrambling for completion funds, believing the film can be most effective if it is released within a few months. Creative Retaliation, Lucene hopes, will be their contribution to the healing process.

—Jay Blotcher