Plenty of artists interested in designing memorial

BY ROSE POST
SALISBURY POST

Would many of them want to design a memorial for an unmarked black cemetery in a small southern town?

“Usually,” says the director of the Waterworks Visual Arts Center, “you get a 1 percent return.”

That means the Freedman’s Cemetery Project Committee and the Waterworks staff could expect about 15 responses, maybe 20, from artists interested in designing an appropriate memorial to mark the old slave cemetery at the corner of North Church and West Liberty streets.

“And we got almost a 5 percent return!” she says, surprised and happy with an unexpected 67 applications from individual artists and design teams (which means many more than 67 people responded) from 22 states stretching from California to New York.

“We were very pleased with the response,” she says, interested that 24 were from North Carolina and almost overwhelmed with the number of slides the selection committee will have to look at when they meet Monday at the center to select three finalists.

“They all submitted 8 to 10 slides of completed projects” with their resumes and letters indicating their interest, she says, so the design committee will have to review nearly 700 slides. That alone, she says, indicates what a challenge it is to select an artist.

Opening the envelopes and looking at the quality of work the applicants have done has been exciting, says Patsy Flint, part-time gallery assistant, and Janet Vaughn, a Livingstone College intern, who have organized the submissions for the committee.

“It’s a wonderful response,” Flint says. “We just couldn’t believe it. People are very attracted to the idea that it’s an African American memorial.”

Deliberations will begin Monday morning at 9:30, and Mecham hopes they’ll finish by 1:30.

The three finalists will then be invited to come to Salisbury in April to meet people on the committee and in the community to get a feel for what they want and the issues the community may want addressed in the sculpture.

Community input, she says, is important. “You can’t do the design of a public art project without consulting the public,” hearing opinion, getting suggestions and listening to what the project means to people.

They’ll then come back in May or early June with models and maquettes, which are miniature models of larger pieces, and drawings.

The full project committee will make the final selection, which should be announced in June.

The selection committee, which will begin its work Monday, includes two consultants, Terry Howard of Greensboro and Jennifer Murphy of Charlotte. Howard is a landscape architect who teaches at North Carolina A&T and has worked on a number of public art projects in the Southeast. Murphy is a freelance design consultant for cities around the country in a variety of projects, including signs, parks and public buildings.

The consultants will be paid from a $10,000 New Works grant from the the N.C. Arts Council.

Joe Morris, Salisbury’s urban planner, serves as liaison between the three groups involved with the project — the city, which owns the property; Soldiers Memorial AME Zion Church, which has ancestors of members buried in the cemetery; and the Waterworks Center, because the sculpture is an art project — and its director is coordinator for the project.

Also on the design committee are Carlton Jackson, a local artist, and members of the overall committee, including the Rev. Asibuo Johnson, Dr. Catrelia Hunter, Charles Sherrill, Eleanor Qadirah, Arthur Steinberg, Eldridge Williams and Mecham.

In addition to the New Works funds, the project committee has received a $10,000 grant from the Robertson Foundation, a commitment of another $10,000 from the City of Salisbury and a $2,000 gift from National Starch.

Moreover, Mecham says, the committee will apply for more grants after the artist and the artist’s design have been selected and granting organizations can see the model. The committee also will ask the community for gifts.

“The final cost,” she says, “will be defined by the final selection of the project.”

And the final name of the memorial and the cemetery itself remain open.

The project started in 1997 when Mecham, then a curator at the Waterworks Center, routinely passed the grassy hillside separated from the Old English Cemetery by a wall and wondered what it was.

She learned that it was former cemetery for slaves and freedmen and had been raising questions in the community for a long time. It had been a source of friction when Liberty Street was cut through early in the century. Members of Soldiers Memorial AME Zion Church had asked for an appropriate marker for many years, and at least one person wanted to buy it from the city for private use.

Mecham’s questions prompted the Waterworks Gallery, Soldiers Memorial and Salisbury to join hands to determine what the community would like to see done with the property.

The consensus was that a memorial honoring the named and unnamed, the enslaved and the free African Americans buried on that gentle hill should be erected there, and it should be the impetus for the collection of black history in this community, Mecham says.

Nobody knew where it would lead in the beginning — or what its name really was. Or should be.

Research showed that, in addition to the old slave cemetery and the freedman’s cemetery, maps have at various times labeled it the Oak Grove Cemetery. The new African American History Trail lists it as Oakgrove, with Freedmen in parenthesis.

“I think the name is really important,” Mecham says. “This is really about reclaiming our history. It’s more than about being a slave or being freed. If you say slave and free, it puts it only in relation to white history. It’s more than that. African American history is much older than the years of slavery.

“That,” she adds, “is one of the really exciting things that has come out of this. And one of the things the full committee will resolve is the name.”

The questions have brought the community together. People have offered pictures and stories. Dr. Phyllis Galloway at Heritage Hall at Livingstone College and Kevin Cherry in the History Room at Rowan Public Library are gathering them.

“And now we’re ready to move ahead with the memorial,” Mecham says.

Her question about that grassy hillside got some answers — and raised more questions.

“And that,” says Mecham, “is the neat thing about all of this.”