Children create art from the heart

By Cara Solomon
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Ryden Varland, 7, center, considers the question of where he was when the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks happened. Varland and other participants, Terek Varland, left, Cecilia Klauber, right, and her sister Courtenay, created 9/11 artwork at the Northwest Art Center in Duvall.

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It was too precious, this gift from across the country. An 11-year-old boy in Woodinville had spent hours on it. It was his way of saying he was sorry for the things Lanza had seen.

"I cherish that picture so much," said Lanza, 58, who spent months recovering bodies after Sept. 11. "I'm a little overprotective of it, so that's why I like to keep it at home."

The portrait of a child was drawn by Sam Matson, one of dozens of Eastside children whose artwork will be on display today in a ceremony across from Ground Zero.

Under the direction of Dianne Brudnicki, an art teacher from Duvall, the children in the past few years have created sculptures, sketches, watercolors and other works of art for the people affected by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Their work hangs in firehouses and homes across New York City. It also has been spread across the pages of a book entitled "Messages of Hope, Peace and Love: A gift for the children affected by September 11." Financed partly by Brudnicki, the book has gone out to thousands of families affected by the terrorist attacks.

This year, the children's art is part of a new project called "Bridges," organized by the nonprofit group Voices of September 11. Their work will represent the West Coast in the project, which is designed to connect local communities in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

For more information Voices of September 11 www.voicesofsept11.org/ "Messages of Hope, Peace & Love: A Gift for the Children Affected by September 11" www.devoted.to/thechildren

The children spent the last few weeks of summer creating art with the bridges theme in mind, using everything from music bars to books to show how they were connected to the children in New York.

Ryden Varland, 10, drew a Band-Aid across his painting of the world.

"It was like a huge Band-Aid that covered them up so they wouldn't feel bad anymore," Varland said.

Sam Matson, now 14, already has put more than 100 hours into his portrait, a variation of the one he drew for Lanza — the faces of four children, who are representative of those who lost parents in the attacks.

"I was hoping the artwork would help them, so that they know they're still cared about, even though it's three years later," Sam said.

The project began three years ago as a classroom exercise, shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center. Brudnicki, a teacher at Legacy Homeschool Learning Center, stood before students of all ages with a suggestion: Why not create some art for the children who lost parents in the attacks? And then she asked a tough question: If someone you love died in the attacks, what would you need to comfort you?

Paint that, she told them. And don't worry about mistakes.

"All of a sudden, there was this idea that they could do something, and they weren't so helpless, and there was work to be done," said Brudnicki, co-owner of the new Northwest Art Center in Duvall. "Some kids even cried, like a sense of relief."

The children turned the world all kinds of colors, brushing purple into flowers and turquoise into lakes. They put green bows on teddy bears, red skin on dolphins and made roads through the countryside turn blue. They gave the children of 9/11 everything they themselves would want, from gray bunnies with pink noses to orange sunsets streaked with red.

Brudnicki distributed the art to firehouses across the city. She initially planned to give it to children affected by the attacks, but there was not enough artwork to go around. So before she gave it away, Brudnicki had the work reproduced in a book. In it are messages from the artists, written in their own handwriting, all of them beginning with the words "Dear Friend."

In small, tidy writing, 11-year-old Stephanie Johnson explained her watercolor of a red barn sitting on an island, surrounded by trees.

"I think the house on the Island is brave because it is alone," she wrote. "But I painted trees all around the house so it would not be alone."

Several of the children visited New York in 2002 to stand in candlelight vigils on the anniversary and deliver the book to families affected by the attacks. They met Lanza, the former rescue worker, during a stop at the mayor's office. At the time, Lanza was the director of the operations-and-response unit.

He spent four hours poring over the book with the children, listening to the stories of how each image had crept into each child's mind.

"It was just incredible," said Lanza, who decided to take them on a tour of Ground Zero. "As much as I loved their artwork, I thought the kids had great, great souls."

This year, Brudnicki toted more than 60 pieces of art to the ceremony in New York City. And as part of the Bridges project, she is offering a watercolors workshop for the children affected by 9/11. She will work with them, as she has worked with the children in Duvall, teaching them how to use art to reach people in pain.

The artwork will then be sent to others who might need it, from soldiers in Iraq to children affected by the recent attack at a school in Russia.

"Who better to make cards for them than the families here who understand their pain?" Brudnicki said by phone from New York. "Who knows better the terror that they've gone through?"

Brudnicki did not lose anyone in the 9/11 attacks. But as the mother of a son who nearly died several years ago, Brudnicki knows something about pain. And when her family passed through so much of it, she made a pledge to herself: Whenever she saw someone suffer, she would not let them push past it alone.

"We felt sort of abandoned and left alone," said Brudnicki, whose son nearly died of heart defect when he was an infant. "I made a promise when he got better that I would never do that to someone else."

Cara Solomon: 206-464-2024 or csolomon@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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