Assemblage

Roy Ray learned of the September 11^th terrorist attacks on America from his home in St. Ives, England, thousands of miles away. Glued to his television, he watched live coverage of the chaos erupting in lower Manhattan. As the news grew more detailed over the next few days he was particularly unsettled by the audio clips being shared of victims’ last phone calls to their loved ones. This panel was created as an interpretation of the rubble at Ground Zero in those earliest hours, into which Ray incorporated actual broken computer and cell phone parts. These were intended as a solemn tribute to the urgent personal communications occurring that day.

The 9/11 Panel is one of five three-dimensional compositions that Ray conceived for the larger Evilution Project: Where Their Footsteps Left No Trace, a series memorializing the victims of modern mass atrocities. The other four panels are homages to the large-scale tragedies that occurred at Coventry Cathedral, Dresden, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima during World War II. To Ray, each place had become “synonymous with the destruction of innocent lives by the corrupt use of 20^th-century science, technology and airborne power." The terrors experienced at these sites also reminded the artist of the fear he had felt as a child during Germany’s aerial bombing of England during World War II.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, all five panels were installed in St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church several blocks north of the World Trade Center site. Father Kevin Madigan, who had provided pastoral counseling to many rescue and recovery workers during the aftermath at Ground Zero, blessed the artworks. He also presided at the dedication of Ray’s 9/11 Panel to victims Father Mychal Judge, Cyril “Rick” Rescorla, and all the first responders who made the ultimate sacrifice while trying to save others. Rescorla, a vice president of corporate security at Morgan Stanley quartered in the South Tower, hailed from Cornwall near Saint Ives where the artist resided.