Lyme Academy sculptor completes 9-11 Memoria Project

Stephen Shaheen, a Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts professor, was studying in Italy on Sept. 11, 2001, when two planes crashed into the World Trade Center.

Despite being out of the country when the tragedy occurred, the event forever changed the young artist's life. The skills he was honing in an overseas stone-carving program were immediately directed into a project the magnitude of which he had never even imagined.

A decade in the making, this past autumn, Shaheen's labor of love, titled the "Memoria Project"-13-foot marble sculptures surrounded by granite blocks engraved with all 2,987 names of those who lost their lives in the tragedy-was dedicated in a waterside park in Highlands, N.J., 10 minutes from the small town of Rumson, where Shaheen grew up.

"I'm from a (county) that was severely impacted," Shaheen says. "We lost a lot of lives. Everyone knew someone affected."

Shaheen explains that many of the people who died had taken the ferry across the Hudson River from Highlands to Manhattan that day, and nearly 8,000 people were evacuated by boat to Highlands, which became a major triage point for the recovery operation.

In a twist of fate, in Italy on Sept. 11, 2001, Shaheen was visited by his long-time friend Evan Urbania, who grew up in the next town over from Shaheen.

"We couldn't get in touch with anybody," Shaheen recalls. "Then I found out someone my family knew had been killed. It became more concrete."

Soon after Shaheen and Urbania returned to the U.S. they realized that many memorials that had been constructed were makeshift and impermanent.

"There were walls where people left personal articles, paper, things that were degrading, falling apart," Shaheen says. "I started to think about creating a lasting memorial.

"I had worked in a travertine quarry-in the classical tradition-in Italy. I remembered seeing old Roman place makers in the Louvre-property dividers used by the Romans: big pillars with the top half the torso of a person. I imagined the physical embodiment of a figure facing out in that direction (toward where the WTC had stood)."

Shaheen says he started sketching; a broken, eroded kind of statue. Celtic ruins and sacred spaces like Stonehenge came to mind, he says. He began working with two figures (mirroring the Twin Towers) encircled by stones.

"The sacred circle idea became the foundation for the project-a vision for the memorial," he says.

He also thought, "What if the names of the victims were actually etched in stone?"

Meanwhile, Urbania began figuring out how to fund the project, investigating ways to incorporate Shaheen's idea as a non-profit.

"We did it the old workshop way-setting up a nonprofit to create the memorial and enrich the community in a positive way-giving back to what was obviously a terrible event," Shaheen says.

The Gateway National Recreation Area granted access to the Memoria Project to create the sculpture at the end of Sandy Hook, N.J., on public land, where visitors could watch and participate.

The monumental sculptures were carved during 2002, thanks to a donation of $40,000 worth of white Imperial Danby marble from a quarry in Danby, Vt.-the same stone used for the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.

From that point on, Shaheen says, other donations started rolling in, funds for the $35 a square foot it costs just to cut the stone, $10,000 to transport it to New Jersey, and $1,000 a day for a crew.

"People gave in large and small ways," Shaheen notes. "Four months after the tragedy, people wanted to be a part of it."

Two of his former teachers, master Italian artisans Marcello Sennati and Ampelio Rinaldi-Shaheen (no relation) flew in from Tuscany for their first visit to the U.S. to assist Shaheen in carving the monument. They spent seven weeks sculpting the marble statues, using as reference plaster models Shaheen had constructed.

The blocks of stone were set up in a field, covered by a tent, with bleachers, and two roadways leading to it. During the sculpting process, the group held 37 free lectures and workshops.

"I liked the idea of public engagement versus working isolated in a studio. It was very organic," he says.

Families who had lost loved ones were given the opportunity to work on the sculptures, too.

"It was very therapeutic for people," Shaheen says. "They spent hours and hours (chiseling and sanding the stone). People held vigils, made it their own."

After completion of the main sculptures, progress slowed to a halt for the next nine years.

"There were challenges to situating it permanently, and then the economy tanked," Shaheen explains.

Another issue was engraving the polished granite blocks with the names of all those who perished on 9-11-after reconciling four lists of the deceased.

The approaching 10th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks became an impetus to complete the memorial, and Shaheen says everything somehow came together.

A permanent location was finalized in Veteran's Park in Highlands; ground was broken on the new site in late August; the stones were in place by Sept. 9, allowing for a commemorative ceremony on Sept. 11; and final details like grass planting and lighting installation were complete for an Oct. 23 dedication.

Shaheen admits that there was huge stress involved in starting a public project of this magnitude as a fledgling sculptor with so many people investing money and resources over the years. But he is happy to have been able to bring to reality a permanent memorial with a "visual connection to New York City" that so many members of the community helped to create, and where people can continue to come and honor the memories of their loved ones and all those whose lives were lost.