Danbury 9-11 Memorial Project

Mayor Mark Boughton announced at a community September 11 Memorial Service in 2003 that the City of Danbury, CT would erect a permanent September 11 Memorial and dedicate it on September 11 2004. The appointed 9-11 committee then selected Henry Richardson to create the sculpture that would be the focal point of the memorial. Richardson created the sculpture by taking huge sheets of 28 inch square panels of ½ inch glass, cut out the centers and then used a hammer and chisel to chisel out the inner space, forming a 21 inch square by 144 inch interior space- representing the absence of the World Trade Towers to their proportional dimensions. The interior empty space is the same proportional dimensions as the physical presence of both towers.

Looking from the front of the sculpture through a 8 inch wide window to the inside of the column, one sees an inner column of polished glass, 3 inches thick by 9 inches wide by 12 feet high, with engraved names of all the Connecticut victims. Danbury resident's names are highlighted at eye-level. Richardson chose to alphabetize the victims names by first name, feeling that to be a more personal way of finding a loved one. The memorial, located on Main Street in Elmwood Park is a 12 foot high, 6000 pound tower of glass mounted on a pentagon of Connecticut granite.

Healing the World (Tikkun)

A glass sculpture from Henry Richardson's spheroid series was created out of layered circles of reconstructed, fractured glass. Each ring of bonded, shattered glass was mathematically calculated to correspond to a correct circumference for each layer, the sum of which forms this 5,000 lb., 6 foot hollow crystalline sphere. The inspiration for Tikkun comes from Henry's belief that societies which inspire and welcome individual acts of grace become more considerate, more kind, more tolerant, and more open. The word Tikkun, comes from the Hebrew phrase "Tikkun Olam," which simply means: repairing the world. According to the oral tradition of Hebrew mysticism, as God created the universe, divine substance became infused into every aspect of our material world, including each and every one of us. When any one of us does a good deed, an act of kindness, a beneficent gesture, we become part of a collective force that mends the universe. Henry created Tikkun, and titled it, to allow each person their individual interpretation of this concept. For Henry, Tikkun is the hope that our collective acts of grace will ultimately, like these shattered fragments of glass, contribute to a better world--a sparkling, crystalline whole. Questions related to the acquisition or exhibition of Tikkun should be addressed to Henry Richardson.

Orb by Easthampton Artist Reflects Theme of Universality

"Part of the purpose of the piece is to provide a way in which anyone who looks at it can have an experience that is personal to them."

There is an ancient Kabbalistic myth that imagines at the time of creation a giant earthen vessel containing the light of goodness. The vessel slips from God's hands and tumbles toward the Earth, where it breaks into innumerable pieces. Those that have come to inhabit the Earth are charged with piecing the metaphorical vessel back together, one good deed at a time. In Hebrew, the phrase used is Tikkun Olam, which often translates "to repair the world," usually through acts of charity.

For Henry Richardson, an area glass artist with a studio at One Cottage Street, this story and the beauty of the word Tikkun captures the spirit of his newest project, the largest of his career. Since late summer, he has been literally piecing together a six-foot-tall orb out of cut and chipped blue-tinted plate glass. Even though the sculpture is hollow, he estimates it will weigh nearly 5,000 pounds when completed, involving 142 layers of epoxied half-inch glass.

"I was trying to find a simple term, a way to describe the positive universality of humanity," said Richardson, who got the idea for the name from a friend in New York. Not only did Tikkun capture the scope Richardson wanted his piece to address, but the many meanings of the word allowed the work to remain open to communication. Tikkun can also mean to heal and to help. "Part of the purpose of the piece is to provide a way in which anyone who looks at it can have an experience that is personal to them," he said.

Next week, Richardson will get a chance to find out what the rest of the sculpture world thinks about his piece, as he travels to Chicago in a rented truck with his partner, Lynda Hagaerstrom, and the fragile payload. Richardson has been granted a much-coveted place in the central hall of the Sculpture Objects Functional Arts Exposition later this week. The event is an annual showcase for the premier three-dimensional art galleries in the world, said Richardson. "It's a huge honor. This is very prestigious," he said. The placement is so prestigious, in fact, that several wealthy collectors and corporations expressed interest in purchasing the $100,000 piece before it was even completed. That selling price, if realized, will make the piece both a financial and artistic accomplishment, well worth the long nights, the nerve-wracking drive and even the removal of a door frame from One Cottage Street to get the globe out.

Richardson, a Northampton resident, has also been invited to speak to a Chicago Art Institute class about the technical difficulties of designing and executing such a large piece. Richardson used a computer model to figure the dimensions of the hundreds of individual glass arcs."You never know what will happen. If your math was bad, you'll come up with a banana," he said. At some point, he said he hopes that Tikkun finds a home in a public place, where people can interact with it on a daily basis, consider its size and symmetry and their own roles in the world.

By Michael Scherer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.