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 | Seven Rising Exhibitions I have been painting the downtown skyline view of the World Trade Center from my Tribeca studio window as part of my practice for the last decade. Seven Rising is a new cycle of watercolor paintings bringing continued contemplation to the changing skyline and streetscapes of Lower Manhattan. The rebuilding of downtown serves as a metaphor for the evolution of the city as it recovers from the infusion of horror into its body politic.This void at Ground Zero has generated a power with its absence and negative forms as forceful as the Towers did before. Those who continue to live and work under the empty sky never forget that day. But now, the skyline is morphing again with the raising of the first tower to replace Seven World Trade Center. Ground Zero has become a focus and opportunity for those ready to look to the future. But what type of place is this now? It is certainly more than a construction site. The bedrock below is sanctified by loss as the steel skeleton rise above. Flags and security barriers have transformed the quiet downtown streets as cranes gesture skyward. The Seven Rising watercolors were made from the fringe of the hole. Their creation in the studio is a reflection of each of our struggle to come to terms with loss and resurrection. In the Wake Exhibitions The penetration of the skin of the North Tower by the doomed jet was an injection of poison, horror and hatred that still courses through our body politic. For those of us who live downtown and witnessed the attack, the streets and empty sky still resonate with the after-image of the towers and the emotions of the day. My artwork has always been about joy. As a landscape painter, I try to open myself up to the unique beauty of a moment in a place. The paintings reflect the emotions triggered by that transcendental moment as mediated by the painting process. My work has shared my highest moments with my viewers. The Pools and Reflections of summer 2001 are testament to my being Immersed in that flow. My domestic interior, bath, and window view became a microcosm of the play of light, water and energy of the larger world. But I was perched On Edge for a plunge I could not foresee. 9/11/01 changed the way it feels to be me in the world. It feels as if we are now on Old Testament time as the Apocalypse came to our door. The experience of painting my Witness and meditating on the loss, sadness, and power of that day has left me with little ability to access the joy of life. The course of Witness ends with 9/11/02, a depiction of the day when victim’s family members first went down into the newly cleared pit of the WTC site. A high wind blew up and with it a dust cloud resettled on Tribeca a year to the date after the attack. Once again I was rubbing that dust into my watercolor paper. My recent work is coming from a new emotional place. The Empty Tubs are portraits of absence. Victoria points the way to rebirth from the darkness, but the shadows of the absent towers still haunt me. ••• My painting practice is fired by a sensibility honed on twenty years of abstract painting. The recent work is an exploration of the interaction of the external world and my interior view out during the act of drawing or painting. Each work is a reaction to a moment of sensual input that triggered a resonant response in me. Witness is the result of my thirty-year painting practice being brought to bear on what I saw and recorded at my home on 9/11/01. These watercolors are an elegy to the lives lost that day. My wife and I were in my Tribeca studio on that sunny morning when the first jet roared over our skylight and slammed in North Tower six blocks away. My camera was at the window as I had been photographing the melancholy, rainy rooftops on 9/10/01. Drawing from this window has been a practice of mine for fifteen years as seen in City. I took my first photo within seconds of impact as the pigeons were lifting to the sound of the explosion at 8:45. I was drawing and photographing on my rooftop the rest of the day in a dazed state of confusion until Seven World Trade Center fell at 4:30. We thought the attacks were ongoing as explosions continued through the afternoon. There was no electricity or phone service. I was on a neighboring rooftop when the South Tower collapsed in my camera viewfinder. The camera shutter froze as I looked on in disbelief. I ran for my life from the debris cloud but was only dusted as the cloud dissipated as it reached me. My family evacuated uptown that night but returned the next day to find our home transformed and unlivable. We needed masks to breathe in our smoke-filled loft. The streets were filled with firemen, disaster workers and crushed vehicles. That night we were again evacuated due to the bomb threat at the Empire State building. We hit the street to panicked crowds yelling “run south”. We had just come from the south. We returned home after four days to what had become ground zero. We lived behind swat team barricades for the next four months as the building across the street was identified as a potential terror target. Our phone service was not restored until December 12th. We have lived through the fire that burned for months, the heroic rescue and recovery effort, and a sense of loss that permeates our neighborhood and city. When the second tower fell, the studio flooded with light. I had been living in the shadow of the towers for twenty-two years. But this new light has shadows of it’s own. Light is the protagonist of Pools and Reflections. The paintings portray a moment in a specific place when the interplay of light, water, air, ground, and body coalesce. The time I have spent by the river, on the sea looking at water led me to start to paint knee deep in the Delaware and Florida Bay, and the bath and pool works are deeper immersions into that research. The new Poolscapes depict the landscape as seen by the swimmer as his eyes break the surface of the water. One eye looks above the water, one eye looks below and the waterline melds both worlds. Read what the critics say. The portals In the Mountains, By the Sea, The City, By the River, In the Garden offer entry into bodies of work that focus on capturing a moment of transcendence. These watercolors and paintings have their start on site in the places that have special resonance to my life. I have been painting in the Adirondack Mountains, Delaware and Hudson River Valleys, Florida Keys, Lower Manhattan and in the garden of my Bucks County home. In the Studio offers entry into my private world of studio practice and self-portraiture. These works have developed over last few years as my gaze turns inward during the winter months. Self-portraiture brings the artist’s gaze to bear upon itself in the act of looking. The images of open hands and feet on the wood floor point to the moment when the visual stream melts corporeal limitations into the surrounding energy fields. The abstract paintings of The Flow and Interiors map the patterns of growth, destruction and rebirth that govern life’s processes. The imagery is rooted in the natural world, and mirrors the multi-leveled complexity of nature and celebrates the beauty of a twisted order that animates the world around us. It was Pollack and Rothko who first made me understand the spiritual component of painting; it was Kandinsky and Mondrian who made me realize how visual music was made; it was Picasso who taught me that arts forms could be as diverse as life’s forms. Abstract painting is my mother tongue and I speak the language of representation with its distinct accent. RECENT EXHIBITIONS “Witness” James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania July 22, 2006-November 5, 2006 “Art: A Reflection of Community” Neiman Gallery, Columbia University, NY, NY June 16, 2005-August 12, 2005 “ Downtown Views” Lower Manhattan Cultural Council at C.B.Ellis, NY, NY January 2005-January 2006 “Tribeca Film Festival Art Awards” Viet Nam Gallery, New York, New York April 2005 [ View Award as PDF ] EXHIBITIONS 2002-2004 “Witness” Northampton Community College, Bethlehem, PA. August 25-September 29, 2004 “New York Show” Opeloussas Museum of Art April 15-August 20, 2004 Biennale Internazionale Dell’Arte Contemporanea Florence, Italy December 6-December 14, 2003 “Witness” Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX. August 21-October 19, 2003 "Pools and Reflections" Wichita Falls Museum, Wichita Falls, TX. September 13-November 8, 2003 “In the Garden- Todd Stone” Steinhart Conservatory, Brooklyn Botanical Garden June 22- August 4, 2003 "Pools and Reflections" Waterworks Art Center, Salisbury, NC. June 6-August 24, 2003 "Fluid Images" Ellen Noel Art Museum, Odessa Texas March 20-May 25, 2003 "9/11-One Year Later" The New York Historical Society, NewYork September 2-November 17, 2002 "In Response" MMC Gallery Marymount Manhattan College, New York September 9-October 5, 2002 "Zona Cena " Drama Loft Production East Hampton, New York August 2002 "Manhattan Skylines" The Museum of the City of New York , New York January19-June 2, 2002 "Living In The Shadows" Bronx River Art Center, New York January 26-March 2, 2002 "Reactions" Exit Art Gallery New York, New York January 12-March 30, 2002 Selected Solo Exhibitions: 2006 James A. Michener Museum, Doylestown PA 2004 Northampton College, Bethlehem, PA. 2003 Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas 2003 Wichita Falls Museum, Wichita Falls, Texas 2003 Ellen Noel Art Museum, Odessa, Texas 2003 Steinhart Gallery, Brooklyn Botanic Garden 2003 Waterworks Art Center, North Carolina 1996 Remington Museum, Ogdensburg, NY. 1995 Lake Placid Center for the Arts, Lake Placid, NY. 1993 Blue Hill Cultural Center, Pearl River, NY. 1988 Atlantic Kempinski Gallery, Hamburg, Germany 1986 Robert Mondavi Winery, Oakville, CA. 1984 Galerie Meissner, Hamburg, Germany 1983 Arras Gallery, NY., NY. 1981 Martha White Gallery, Louisville, KY. 1980 Schneeback Gallery, Cincinnati, OH. 1979 Fred Dorfman Gallery, NY., NY. 1978 Tanglewood Gallery, NY., NY. 1977 Ten Downtown, NY., NY. 1975 Williams College Art Museum, Williamstown, MA. Selected Group Exhibitions: 2005 Neiman Gallery, Columbia University, NY, NY 2005 Tribeca Film Festival Juror's Prize, NY NY 2005 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council 2004 Opelousas Museum of Art, Opelousas LA. 2003 Biennale Internazionale del Arte Contemporanea , Florence, Italy 2003 Organization of Independent Artists, New York, NY. 2002 MMC Gallery, Marymount Manhattan College, New York 2002 The Museum of the City of New York 2001 Bronx River Arts Center 2001 Exit Art, New York, NY. 2000 Olympic Museum, Lake Placid, NY. 1999 Delaware Center of Contemporary Art 1998 Bucknell U. Art Gallery, Lewisburg, PA. 1997 Broome St. Gallery, NY., NY. 1997 State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg 1995 Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA. 1994 Bridgewater/Lustberg Gallery, NY.,NY. 1987 112 Greene Street Gallery, NY., NY. 1986 Basel Art Fair, Basel, Switzerland 1984 Internazionaler D'Arte, Todi, Italy 1983 Sutton Gallery, NY., NY. 1977 Marilyn Pearl Gallery, NY., NY. 1974 Museum of Albuquerque, NM. Awards and Grants: 2004 John Anson Kittredge Fund 2003 Abbey Fund Mural Fellowship, National Academy of Art 2003 Puffin Foundation 1999 Mayfair Award in Painting 1997 State Museum of PA. Painting Award 1976 National Endowment Fellowship in Painting 1975 Lawrence Museum Purchase Award 1974 U. of Albuquerque Watercolor Award Selected Collections: Museum of the City of New York, NY. Williams College Museum, Williamstown, MA. Art in Embassies Program ABC Motion Pictures, NY., NY. Atlantic Richfield Corp., San Francisco, CA. Banco Nationale de Lavoro, Rome, Italy Bankers Trust, N.Y., NY. Brown Forman, Louisville, KY. Cabrini Hospice, NY., NY. Chubb Insurance, Newark, NJ. Citicorp., NY., NY. Gensenschacts Hypobank, Hamburg, Germany Handels Bank, Lubeck, Germany Huntington National Bank, Columbus, OH. Lufthansa Airlines, Munich, Germany Pace Collection, Dallas, TX. R.J. Reynolds, Winston-Salem, NC. Readers Digest Inc., Purchase, NY. Stone Energy, New Orleans, LA. Time Warner Music, NY., NY. Unilever Corp., Hamburg, Germany Education: 1969 Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, MA. 1969-71 Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. 1974 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM. B.F.A. Recent Press Coverage of Todd Stone’s work: 7/21/06 The Morning Call Steve Wartenberg "Rising from Dust to Art" Allentown, PA 7/21/06 The Express-Times Rebecca Hess "Birdseye View of 9/11 from Todd Stone" Easton, PA 8/3/06 Time Off Packeton Line Anthony Stoeckert "City on Fire" Princeton NJ 8/6/06 The Philadelphia Inquirer Edward J. Sozanski "Art: A Delicate Medium for a Raw Subject" 8/16/06 U.S. 1 Cassidy Enoch-Rex "A Watercolorist Witnesses 9/11" Princeton, NJ 8/21/06 Publishers Weekly (Cover Image) Park Ave South, NY 9/1/06 Art Matters (Cover Image) Montgomery Newspapers, Phil., PA | ||||
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