MONUMENT HEAD – ONE
Bronze
2004
15" X 25" X 12"
edition 40

Without premeditation, my work in pencil and pastel and bronze began to reflect my childhood exposure and memories. Only later did I realize I was not only developing a style and artistic sensibility, I was somehow revealing an African American people, many of whom had experienced life in the rural south in a way I could not have. Although I believe that my work only represents a portion of the black experience in this country, I also believe that the artist who reaches too broadly in an effort to express human emotion risks diluting any emotional impact at all? This piece came together on a late Santa Fe night in the foundry as I reworked the original clay head of one of the soldiers. In a fury of hot, soupy clay the surfaces were wiped and formed, the freedom of expression a catharsis of sorts. When I returned the next morning rested and viewed the head anew, my eyes watered as I thought of this fellow swallowed up by the mud and muck of those rain soaked, humid hills along both sides of the Mighty Mississippi, looking for one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.