Like her life was at one time, the images are blurred.
The objects enclosed in four large cubes made of PVC pipes wrapped with a layer of frosted vinyl are recognizable but fuzzy — the same state of Sonia Gutiérrez’s TV, radio and mind during the week she spent in shock in her Queens, N. Y., apartment following the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
When patrons visit the Fayetteville Arts Festival this weekend at the Fayetteville Town Center, they will be greeted by “ Defrag, ” Gutiérrez’s art installation that demonstrates how Gutiérrez coped while the biggest terrorist attack on American soil took place.
Through the installation, she wants to show how she was able to clear her mind — mostly — through the healing power of time. The four large cubes represent fragments of memories and contain everyday objects that patrons can recognize through “ a hint of the shadow of the image. ”
“ I’m constantly interacting with computers and so by having the metaphor of computers bringing order to disorder to myself and helping to organize the thoughts and memories that I have is very similar to the process of computer defragment, ” said Gutiérrez, who founded the New Design School and the New Design Center in Fayetteville in November 2005.
Before returning to Northwest Arkansas, Gutiérrez called the Big Apple home from 2001 to 2003 while working on her master’s degree of fine arts in design and technology at the Parsons School of Design after completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Arkansas.
Sept. 11, 2001, started out as a regular Tuesday morning with Gutiérrez preparing a presentation for her thesis.
At some point after 8: 45 a. m. EST, when the first airliner crashed into the World Trade Center’s north tower, she received a phone call from a man she was dating who had just made the commute from Queens to Manhattan.
“ He just basically told me not to go to school and to stay and to turn on the TV, ” Gutiérrez said.
She turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane crash into the south tower of the World Trade Center.
Then the screen erupted in static as the giant TV antenna that sat atop the tower and supplied most of the city with TV reception was destroyed.
“ It was just fuzz, ” Gutiérrez said of her TV as well as the radio and the phone line. “ Basically you didn’t know what was going on after that. … It seems just like I stayed around the apartment for the next week. ”
Gutiérrez remembers the extreme amount of soot that gathered on her windowsill for days, “ bits of burnt paper flying around” and an electrical fire smell. Her apartment was only three miles from the World Trade Center.
At first, though, she thought of the people. The City That Never Sleeps was missing some of its hustle and bustle.
“ It was pretty scar y because everything was so much more quiet, ” Gutiérrez said. “ People really were more careful. They had slowed down. The pace of life felt like it was in slow motion. People were making eye contact. I guess there was just that feeling of appreciation for human life or appreciation for the person [next to you ] because you didn’t know. They could have been involved.
“ There’s always something good that comes out of bad. I think if anything, making people slow down is one of those things. ”
At 2 p. m. that day she was finally able to call her mother. It wasn’t until several months later that she could bring herself to visit Ground Zero.
Although Gutiérrez said she made a breakthrough in 2003 after several counseling sessions, she still has some healing left to do. Working on this project with the help of six other people has helped with that process. One of the people who has helped Gutiérrez the most is her self-proclaimed personal assistant Mike Davis, a stone sculptor and her fiance.
“ We all have our personal stories and that’s just kind of her thing, ” Davis said.
Gutiérrez knows her Sept. 11 experience may be different from someone who didn’t live in New York City at the time. Still, though, she hopes that everyone can find empathy through the various objects in the cubes, especially after reading her artist statement.
“ I hope that they can interpret the piece as it relates to their own personal experience, ” she said.
Futhermore, she wants others to realize that they too can create similar forms of art to help with their own healing processes.
“ Through the process of creating, you kind of work through mentally anything that’s on your mind, ” she said. “ I guess I want to leave an invitation for them to consider that as an option and to think about it. ”
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
