Santa Fe Offers Respite for Artists

New York Times
October 7, 2001

Santa Fe Offers Respite for Artists
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 3:40 p.m. ET Santa Fe, NM (AP) — Painter Teressa Valla was supposed to be doing work for an upcoming show in Italy. Instead, she roamed the streets of New York, taking photographs.
In the days following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she felt numb, distracted, ill at ease. In need of a respite, she found the prospect of one in New Mexico.
Valla is among some 50 artists expected to take advantage of free living and studio space at the Santa Fe Art Institute. Residencies of two to four weeks are being offered from mid-October through early March.
“What I really hope is to get more centered again,“ said Valla. “Kind of be away from ground zero and to visually make sense of what’s just gone on.“
The program was conceived by the institute’s new director, Diane Karp, who had left New York just before the attacks to take the Santa Fe job.
``We’ve had artists who have written and simply said that they’re so rattled, their lives are such a shambles, that they just need a way to get out of New York City,’’ said Karp.
“It’s been very harrowing,“ said Joseph Nechvatal, who does computer-based paintings and lives about a mile from where the World Trade Center towers crumbled.
“You smell this ongoing smoke that’s billowing out of the ruins. It’s foul. It smells like burning brakes,“ Nechvatal said.
The privately funded art institute, with a budget of about $500,000 a year, sponsors residency programs for emerging artists, but no programs had been scheduled for the next few months.
Karp has rounded up donations to help fund the program, and is looking for more. Artists may choose to work during the respite, but it isn’t required.
Fran Siegel, who watched the collapse of the trade center from the roof of her apartment, said she feels it may be too soon to make art about what happened. “It’s very hard…to somehow make sense of it,“ she said.

A Safe Haven

Pasatiempo, The New Mexican’s Weekly Magazine of Arts, Entertainment and Culture

November 9 - 15, 2001 By Teri Thomson Randall For the New Mexican

Painter Teressa Valla was the first to arrive in Santa Fe on Oct. 22. “I felt relief as soon as I got off the plane,” she said.

Valla watched the World Trade Center burn from the roof of her apartment near the Museum of Natural History in upper Manhattan. Since the attacks, she said, she has been surrounded by the constant sounds of sirens, the acrid smell, the soberness of the city and a heavy sadness. At first she felt numb and did everything she could to stay in control, she said. But grief eventually overcame her. Seven firemen from her local fire station had been killed. “I found myself crying a lot, vacillating,” she recalled during a recent interview at the institute.

Valla had been selected to represent the United States at the Biennale Internazionale Dell’Arte Contemporaneo in Florence, Italy, in December 2001, but she began to doubt whether she would be able to complete the work in time for the exhibit. Material concerns weighed heavily as well. As an artist-in-residence for the New York public schools, her income had been drastically reduced after the attacks.

A turning point came last weekend, when she joined John Fischer and Vincent Pomilio, two other New York artists in the Emergency Residency Program, in an overnight trip to Walter De Maria’s installation The Lightning Field, in southwest New Mexico.

“I felt like I was going into the interior of the world,” Valla said. “It brought me back to my spirit. Even though there was no lightning, the place ignites your own lighting. The most important thing is that I have started again.”

Valla is now exploring the theme of the hero in her work, particularly the firemen and the other rescue workers.

Fischer’s home and studio were located 3 1/2 blocks from Ground Zero, in a basement apartment on Warren Street. When the first plane hit, he was having breakfast at a local restaurant.

“You see it but you can’t compute it, you can’t process it,” Fischer said during a recent interview. “Not understanding the magnitude, I said to myself. ’They’ll fix it.’“

Fischer is an electronic painter who creates fascinating abstract images and portraits using Adobe Photoshop software. As the events unfolded, the artist recorded the horror in his neighborhood with his digital camera. When the second tower collapsed, the sky became so black that he could barely see his hand in front of his face. He was told to evacuate, and he left immediately, taking only his camera.

Since that day, Fischer has been living with friends and relatives. His home, which he had professionally cleaned to remove the silica- and absestos-laden dust, is still uninhabitable.

When Fischer arrived in Santa Fe, an overwhelming sense of security swept over him, he said. The feeling brought back memories from his youth, when he first arrived in New York City as a young Jewish immigrant from Europe during World War II. When the war broke out, Fischer’s family fled their home in Belgium and moved around Europe for three years, trying to escape the Nazis. They finally caught a ship to Cuba, then a plane to Miami and finally a train to New York City, where relatives were waiting. Fischer was 13 years old.

He remembers asking his mother, “Can we walk around here? Are we really safe?”

“I had that parallel feeling when I got here,” he said, “that feeling of safety I have been relieved of constantly worrying. I am so lucky to be here.”

“We need to stay in tune with spirit, because that is the only salvation we have. Art that is connected with spirit is important. Everything else we don’t need.”

Painter Pomilio normally enjoyed coffee and donuts at the World Trade Center at 9:15 a.m. His studio is located above a baker on busy Chambers Street, just four blocks away. Fortunately, on Sept. 11 he was in upstate New York visiting friends...

“Society has an obligation to support its artists, especially in times like these,” Diane Karp said.