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Artist envisions permanent memorial in Makanda

BY SCOTT FITZGERALD, THE SOUTHERN

Thursday, September 11, 2008 10:29 PM CDT

MAKANDA - This sleepy artists' community located south of Carbondale near the Union County line could get a big boost in the near future depending on response to a proposed 9/11 memorial monument.

"Illinois seems to be the place. Makanda is an artists' community and has a good energy for creativity," said William E. "Anteater" George, a multimedia artist who has studios in Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Makanda.

Shortly before a reception Thursday on the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, George spoke enthusiastically about a permanent monument in the same tone of a sculpture the artist recently unveiled that incorporates images of all three attacked sites.

"We'll be here until the Vulture Fest in October. We're trying to meet expenses. We need a trailer to move it around," said George, whose current monument sits outside Allan Stuck's jewelry store.

George envisions a museum by the monument that would include artistic depictions of the 9/11 attacks from poetry to videos. He has considered locations in South Dakota's Black Hills and Ohio, but personally leans toward Makanda.

"It would be great to have a bunch of artists here and their art work to 9/11," George said.

The artist who attended Southern Illinois University in the 1960s remembers 9/11 as many Americans outside of the attacked sites do - a visual horror of tumbling structures amidst smoke and fire in New York and Washington and broadcasted reports of a jet that crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside for unknown reasons.

"I had all three television stations on that morning, like I do every morning," George said, noting he was working out of his Makanda studio that day.

George said the permanent monument would be black granite stone with the names of all the victims who died that day. The WTC would lie horizontally. It would measure anywhere from 10 to 20 feet high and 80 to 100 feet wide.

scott.fitzgerald@thesouthern.com / 351-5076