Official Press Release: St. Peter's 9-11 Cross

Jon took the hunk of Trade Center steel from my hands and put it back on his workbench. “We’ll leave in about three days,” he said. “After the unveiling.”

“Be weird to leave before the unveiling.”

“Wiseass. I mean right after. On Wednesday. Lee wrote up a press release for it. He’s putting it out first thing tomorrow morning so we pretty much have to get this thing done by then and hit the road."

“Press release, nice.”

“Yeah, I think it would be cool to get a little attention. Oh yeah, that reminds me. I hired a PR firm to help us get in touch with people in the cities we’re going to.”

“You mean like DC and New York?”

“Yeah, plus a few other places. We should sit down later and plan out a route. I’m thinking we go through Nashville.”

Three days. That would make it May 18^th. We’d be on the road for four or five days, a week at most. Even if we took a little longer my wife would be fine, staying with my mom, having some help with the boys. Still, her spoken sentiment of ‘Take your time! Have fun, and be careful!’ would only hold up for so long. A cross-country trip with an old buddy sounded great. But so did figuring out the rest of our life.

Artist Jon Krawczyk and 9/11 Memorial Cross

Begin Pilgrimage to St. Peter’s Catholic Church, N.Y.C.

Unveiling and Departure Wednesday, May 18, 8:00 AM

Los Angeles, CA – May 16, 2011 - Los Angeles sculptor Jon Krawczyk has completed fabrication of a fourteen foot tall stainless steel cross incorporating fragments of steel from the World Trade Center. These relics of 9/11 were provided by the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum, presently under construction at the site of the World Trade Center. The base of the cross will serve as a podium for a stainless steel book, still in fabrication, whose pages will be engraved with the names of those who perished as a result of the 9/11 attacks.

Krawczyk’s 9/11 memorial will take the place of the cruciform I-beam girders found standing in the ruins of the World Trade Center, then moved to St. Peter’s Catholic Church near Ground Zero. St. Peter’s, the oldest Catholic church in New York, was damaged in the attacks of 9-11.

Krawczyk’s 9/11 Memorial Cross will be unveiled at Leslie Sacks Fine Art, 11640 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles (Brentwood) California 90049 at 8:00 AM on Wednesday, May 18th and depart for the East Coast immediately thereafter.

Krawczyk, accompanied by long time friend and author Kevin Kato, will shepherd the artist’s 9/11 Memorial Cross by open truck to Shanksville, Pennsylvania (the crash site of United Flight 93), and the Pentagon in Washington DC, stopping along the way in Santa Fe, Indianapolis, Memphis and Nashville before placing the cross in storage until the original Ground Zero girders cross, now standing at St. Peter’s, is moved later this year to the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

Artist’s statement: “When installed, the cross will be polished to a mirror finish so each and every onlooker will see himself or herself reflected in it, hopefully thinking about those who sacrificed before them, and then considering what their own sacrifice will be. But before they think, I want people to see the beauty first – the beauty of existence, the beauty of the cross, then remember the destruction and find a better way.”

Costs of the 9/11 Memorial Cross are underwritten by a group of anonymous donors, the artist and Leslie Sacks Fine Art. Jon Krawczyk is represented by Leslie Sacks Fine Art.