Art Paper

Christopher Saucedo first experienced the World Trade Center as a massive hole in the ground. In 1969, his father had taken him and an older brother to the site of what would become the world’s tallest buildings. Absent from the expedition was Gregory—the youngest Saucedo brother, born that December. Almost 32 years later, Gregory Thomas Saucedo would be last seen in the North Tower responding to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with his firehouse, FDNY Ladder Company 5. A few days after 9/11, Christopher packed the gear that he used as a sculptor of metal and stone—boots, gloves, respirator, crowbars—and drove to New York City from his home in New Orleans, determined to find his brother in the wreckage.
  
Ten years later, when Saucedo turned to art as a way to process his terror, loss, grief, and destruction, he rejected his usual materials. Instead of steel and stone, he used lighter materials, creating a series of 10 ethereal paper works, one for each year since his brother’s death. Three of the works were displayed in the Museum’s inaugural special exhibition, Rendering the Unthinkable: Artists Respond to 9/11, and were later donated to the Museum.