2020.jpeg
description: This image is a composite of two drawings I made years ago, one when I was in my teens, and the other during my early years in college. The vehicles are space ships, but in the realm of literature, a starship pretty much serves as an analogy for a jetliner. At the time the drawings were made, I considered the images to be pure science fiction. To be sure, they were inspired by the WW-II bomber that crashed into the Empire State Building, with the big difference being that the Empire State survived the crash. I didn't quite anticipate that the total destruction shown in the drawings would become reality, though I knew there was some possibility something like this might happen in the far future. Not the near future. At the two times that I drew these images, I was working on a series of drawings aimed at evoking a maximum sense of drama. I guess that my stumbling across such a tragic idea as teetering high-rises at a young age suggests that skyscrapers were/are an obvious target for those who are seeking maximum terror. As much as I don't want to believe this to be true, I don't think it can be denied. Finally, in the drawings, we see the buildings falling over like giant trees. This is a reflection of the idea that skyscrapers are fixed and rigid entities that have a nearly immutable sense of permanence (even as they are being destroyed in the drawings). The reality, the fluid fall of the World Trade Center towers, was quite different. If I were to ever work on a drawing such as these again--an effort I doubt that I will ever undertake--the final image would look quite a bit different, with the building crumbling downward in a very fluid, organic manner as it begins to list. Something I learned from the 9/11 tragedy. I don't think I will ever look at a skyscraper as a rigid, permanent thing again.