'Future Dreams, Past Nightmares': A 20-Year Passion for Painting the WTC
Todd Stone on the 71st floor of 3 World Trade Center, where he continues his decades-long quest to paint the evolving WTC site, and the landscape beyond. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
With paint and brush, Todd Stone has been documenting the World Trade Center’s evolving landscape—from ghastly to glistening—for 20 years. His work spans the burning towers of September 11, 2001, witnessed from his Tribeca loft on Thomas Street, to today’s transformed 16 acres and beyond.
In 2011, Silverstein Properties provided Stone and three other artists with an aerie on the 48th floor of the developer’s newly built 7 World Trade Center from which to view and interpret the rebuilding below. With Silverstein’s 4 World Trade Center completed, Stone moved easels and paints there to work from the vacant 67th floor. Now the raw space of the 3 World Trade Center’s 71st floor, with extraordinary vistas in every direction, is both his work and gallery space. The artist’s panoramas are painted from easels at three corners of his wrap-around views.
Stone, 70, recently published “Witness/Downtown Rising,” a book of nearly 100 of his paintings made over the past two decades. Below is a sampling of those paintings, with a commentary by the artist, edited from his statement in the book. The volume is available at toddstonestudio.com.
Nocturne Panorama, watercolor, 42x168 inches, 2021
I have had the benefit of a decade spent painting at altitudes of 800 feet in a series of sky studios in the towers of the rebuilt World Trade Center. My work is made in a unique setting in the re-filled sky in the heart of the World Trade Center, overlooking the Memorial site and Oculus, with 360 degree views of Manhattan, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and New York Harbor. Standing in the once emptied sky one can feel both the past and clearly see New York’s present—and maybe glimpse its future.
3 Rising I, watercolor, 18x24 inches, 2015
I have always been drawn to the high spots. This edition includes watercolors I made sitting in the observation deck of the original south tower. I am still painting the same views, now reflected in the mirrored surfaces of the glass-cased towers. Also included in this edition is a selection of my Empty Tub series of 2002-2003. This body of work is part of my artistic response in the aftermath of the attack. They are portraits of absence, made in response to loss.
Left: 8:45, watercolor, 40x30 inches, 2001; Right: 9/11/10, watercolor, 40x30 inches, 2010
The paintings done on the 48th floor of 7 World Trade Center chronicle the building of the Memorial, 1 World Trade Center and 4 World Trade Center. The paintings done on the 67th floor of 4 World Trade Center document New York Harbor and the construction of the Oculus and 3 World Trade Center. The most recent paintings depict the panoramic view from the 71st floor of 3 World Trade Center.
Harbor, 2020, oil/linen, 20x24 inches, 2020
The future vision for Ground Zero captured the imagination of artists and architects from around the world. The site is caught between future dreams and the past nightmares. The empty sky has been refilled by a shimmering reminder of what once stood and the promise of a future city built better, still to come.
New Light, watercolor, 40x29 inches, 2012