"Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue."
Marcel Proust (novelist)
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September 11th, 2001.
As parents are bringing their children to school and employees are arriving at work, a plane crashes into the North Tower of New York City’s World Trade Center. Not long after, another plane gores its southern twin. A third strikes the Pentagon, and a fourth rams into the ground in rural Pennsylvania.
How could an artist commemorate such horrific, tragic events? By looking up.
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Video footage of the attacks, and particularly of the burning buildings collapsing against a "severe" blue sky, are broadcast around the world. Many, like American artist Spencer Finch, can’t help but notice the incredible color of the sky that morning.
Over a decade later, when Finch is asked to create a work for the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, he chooses the day’s stunning blue background as his subject.
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Spencer Finch, “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning”, 2014, National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York. Photo: Ofer Wolberger © James Cohan.
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Entitled Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on that September Morning, Finch’s piece is composed of 2,983 unique paper tiles: one for every victim of both the 9/11 and 1993 World Trade Center attacks.
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Spencer Finch, “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning”, 2014, National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York. Photo: Ofer Wolberger © James Cohan.
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Each square, hand-painted in a different shade of blue, represents the individual lives lost and the subjective side of human memory. "The idea," Finch says, "is that the work is a sort of screen—a catalyst—for other people to remember their memories of the sky."
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For weeks Finch labored over his paper tiles, producing as many as 150 on a single day. Assembled into a monumental mosaic, they cascade across one of the museum’s massive underground walls and frame a moving Virgil quote: "No day shall erase you from the memory of time."
We remember.
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Detail of the work, a Virgil quote: "No day shall erase you from the memory of time." Photo: Ofer Wolberger © James Cohan.
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 Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.
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Marcel Proust (novelist) 
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Spencer Finch, “Trying to Remember the Color of Jackie Kennedy's Pillbox Hat”, 1994, pastel on paper, location unknown © Spencer Finch
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Who painted this portrait?
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Contact Co-Founders Coline and Jean at hello@artips.co.
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