Janet Goldner, From the 55th floor, 1993 photographic painting, 8.5" x 11" http://www.janetgoldner.com

This composite image is a lost view.  I like that it is from the building rather than of the building.  I like that the fragmentation now seems to relate to the attack.  That the image itself has a life it would never have had if the buildings were still standing. I create works which bring the together art and poetry by cutting images and texts into steel sculptures using a welding torch as a drawing instrument. By doing so, I combine the tactile, spatial forms of sculpture with elegant, succinct comments on contemporary social issues.  Light passes through the craggy holes that form the letters and images. A thirty-year cultural journey began when I first traveled to West Africa in 1973.  Since 1995, when I spent eight months in Mali (West Africa) as a Fulbright scholar, I have been engaged in an ongoing dialogue with Malian artists and artisans about our lives, our work and our creative process.  The combining of Western and non-Western images and ideas, and issues of cultural identity in my work is a result of many trips to Africa over the last twenty-five years as well as a response to my own layered American cultural identity.

image gid index