Out of the Ruins - A New York Record: Lower Manhattan, Autumn 2001 [Box set] [Hardcover]

Jean Holabird (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Painter Holabird, a TriBeCa resident since 1975, has long painted downtown scenes: traffic on Church Street, office buildings rising up before a blue sky. After the Twin Towers collapsed, she took sketches of Ground Zero's twisted metal, cranes and American flags, turning them into delicate watercolors almost childlike in their rendering of the new and devastated landscape. Poems by Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot (Dust in the air suspended/ Marks the place where a story endedand others are interspersed with Holabird's paintings, emphasizing the human emotion evoked in her studies of wrecked architecture as well as her own odyssey toward acceptance.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Holabird has lived four blocks from the World Trade Center site for more than 30 years. As an artist she had already been sketching and creating watercolors of the Twin Towers before September 11, 2001. After the attack of that day, Holabird chronicled the cleanup from various sites in the neighborhood, trying to come to terms with what she observed. As she worked, and then arranged the art chronologically, pieces of poetry and prose ran through her mind. The result is a scrapbook of 65 full-color glimpses of the ruins interspersed with selections by William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, Pablo Neruda, Edgar Allan Poe, and others. The excerpts and entries are, by turn, sobering, solemn, provocative, probing, hopeful, celebratory. There is comfort in the cumulative effect of so many voices that have confronted despair and darkness. Many of the images conjure up the spiritual quality surrounding a bombed-out Cathedral. The act of reading (and rereading) and studying the scenes offers a quietly paced opportunity for introspection. Not a first purchase, but a fresh and uplifting one.
Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 138 pages
• Publisher: Gingko Pr Inc (September 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584231149
• ISBN-13: 978-1584231141
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,449,049 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars With emotional and commemorative watercolor paintings, October 6, 2002

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Out of the Ruins-A New York Record: Lower Manhattan, Autumn 2001 (Hardcover)

Compiled and edited by Jean Holabird, Out Of The Ruins: A New York Record is a unique memorial tribute to those who perished and to those who survived the tragic events of the September 11 attacks. Out Of The Ruins is filled from cover to cover with emotional and commemorative watercolor paintings (all of which are presented in vibrant full-color) capturing the cruelties of reality and the resplendence of hope in simple, memorable shapes and patterns. Lines of brief poetry accompany most of the watercolors, creating a profound, combined artistic event. Out Of The Ruins is very highly recommended as an unforgettable, bittersweet memorial volume.