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The day the world fell down
Children’s views of the tragedy
“The falling buildings”
-- By ISTON ANDREW, 9, fourth grade, Perkins Elementary Magnet School for the Arts
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By GRETCHEN LETTERMAN
© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 24, 2001
Sigrid Lovfald's fourth-grade art students had begun their paintings before the attacks.
The art classes at Perkins Elementary Magnet School for the Arts and International Studies in St. Petersburg were studying the use of lines and shapes. To help them visualize, Lovfald had showed them scenes of cities, asking them to look for the strong lines and shapes that anchored the buildings.
The students were using cardboard pieces as paintbrushes, dragging them through tempera paint to apply it to paper. The rigid makeshift brushes lent themselves to the subject.
When one art class met again, it was just moments after the lines and shapes of two cities were altered forever.
As she walked among her students that morning, Lovfald noticed something. Without discussion or prompting, she says, "some of them decided to have their buildings topple."
One painting in particular, by Iston Andrew, was quite moving. "It was incredible," she remembers, her voice rising.
"Without trying to influence him, I said, "Keep finding those lines!' "
Later, Iston told his teacher his painting didn't really have anything to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon but, Lovfald says, "I had to think in the back of his mind was what had happened."
Another of Lovfald's fourth-grade art classes resumed their work several days later. They had more time to absorb the images, she says.
Did their paintings consciously reflect what they had seen?
One student titled her painting, The Terrible Tragic Tuesday. Another called hers City under the rainbow.
-- GRETCHEN LETTERMAN, Lifestyles editor
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