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Wednesday, September 11, 2002

By Jill Cueni-Cohen

Erich Campbell started the school year in 2001 with a project in mind for his monthly art club students.

Two years before, Campbell had worked with elementary pupils in Shaler to create a mural on the Columbine shootings. It showed children and violence in society, and how good things -- things like unity and love -- can come from violence.

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The 6-foot-tall, 16-foot-wide mural went on exhibit at The Andy Warhol Museum in May 2000.

Campbell, now an art teacher at Butler Area Intermediate High School, wanted to do a similar project last year. "I wanted it to deal with something in society or culture," he said.

He knows he had some ideas, but he can't remember now what they were. The art club doesn't meet until the end of September and by the end of September, it was clear what the project would be.

Campbell started sketching ideas and presenting them to the students in the club.

"We talked a lot about design and what they felt after 9/11 -- how this changes everything -- and how this mural needs to visually represent how we all came together while still remembering the towers at the same time, America coming out of it stronger than ever.

"I didn't want a mural with the towers on fire or anything showing death. In fact, the only thing red in the mural is the flag."

Almost a year later, the result still graces the school's stairwell: a 16-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide mural representing peace, patriotism and Americans coming together in the wake of disaster. The twin towers of the World Trade Center, with the Statue of Liberty superimposed on them, reach into the heavens as doves ascend out of the embrace of the flag.

"I walk by it every day, and some days it brings a smile to your face and sometimes it gives you chills," Campbell said.

"Nothing is certain anymore, and the flag wrapping around the towers is symbolizing America's pulling together and comforting those involved directly. The doves represent peace, lives lost and the fact that we need to be at peace with ourselves and one another."

	Students at Butler Area Intermediate High School stream past a giant Sept. 11 mural painted by the school's art club. Teacher Erich Campbell is looking for a way to send the mural to New York for display. (Bob Donaldson, Post-Gazette)

"The mural never ceases to surprise me -- I'm in awe of it," said Stephanie Heitzer of Summit, one of the students involved in the project. "It's so huge that no matter where you stand -- on the platform in front of it, on the stairs below it, looking up at it -- it gives you a really good feeling."

That feeling is apparently shared throughout the student body. The mural is in one of the school's high-traffic areas, yet -- to the amazement of faculty and parents -- students have not done anything to deface it.

"The students have respect. They know not to disturb it in any way," said Calvin Lumley of Butler Township, another student who worked on the project. "It makes me feel good that I could have a hand in something that was meant for 9/11. It symbolizes the remembrance for me, but it also feels like it happened yesterday."

School Principal John Wyllie praised Campbell. "This is the most striking example of [Campbell's] impact on students," Wyllie said. "What he draws out of students and how he gets them to express themselves is simply phenomenal, and it came out across our entire student body.

"Our kids got very involved in contributing to the relief efforts, and this [mural] is something that is very important to them."

About 20 students had a hand in the creation, Lumley said. He himself spent every spare moment on it, especially focusing on the words that cover the buildings.

"We wrote the Pledge of Allegiance and other words relating to freedom onto the sides of the buildings instead of windows," he said. "I felt it was special while I was working on it, but when it was completely done, it was amazing to see the high caliber of the work. I didn't think I had it in me."

Heitzer took on the doves as her focus. "The big dove in the center -- that was mine," she said. "The doves signify lost souls and a more happy feeling that people are free and going to a better place."

Heitzer said the terrorist attacks "completely shocked me. I couldn't speak. It changed my life completely.

"I think about things differently now, and I'm starting to realize what's really important -- family and friends -- and I've grown up a lot."

She's also discovered the impact of art in expressing her emotions. "I'm thinking more about art now, after I realized that the more you feel about it, the better it is, and it was such an awesome feeling." she said. "Now I want to go to art school."

Campbell and his students kept the project under wraps while they worked on it, but Wyllie got to see it in progress. "Near completion, laid flat across tables, it was impressive," he said. "Mounted in the stairwell, it's absolutely inspiring.

"For the first three weeks it was up, it was very common to be walking past it, and you'd have a few people just standing there looking at it. There would be some hushed comments, but people who've been in the building for many years just stopped and stared."

Campbell and his wife, Kristen, have been in contact with people who work at an office near Ground Zero and are interested in exhibiting the mural. But in addition to everything else being sent to New York to commemorate the event, it wasn't possible.

"Maybe it could go there next Sept. 11," Campbell said. "I just want to get it out there for people to see.

"Maybe it could stay right here in Pittsburgh, in PPG Place or the USX Tower or even at the stadiums."

Wyllie would support that, but with some reluctance.

"I know the students who produced it would be extremely proud to have additional people look at it, and I would support something like that," he said.

"But when we put it up, we put it up permanently. The structure we built to support it was made with the idea that it would be there as long as the building was there. It was such a grand historical event that even 20 years from now, it's not going to be irrelevant.

"A large part of me would be sad if it were to leave its home permanently. It could go on tour, but it should eventually come back, because this is its home."

Jill Cueni-Cohen is a free-lance writer.