The Lake County, FL Historical Society met on Feb. 6, 2020 in their Tavares, FL Historical Society Museum to see a presentation by artist and sculptor Nilda Comas on how she is creating an 8-foot marble statue of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune. Comas was introduced by Bob Grenier, President of the Lake County, FL Historical Society.
The Bethune statue will be the first African American statue in the US National Statuary Hall in Washington, DC.
The statue will replace an existing statue of Confederate Lt. General Edmund Kirby Smith, which is being removed due to Socialist "politically correct" complaints about celebrating a Confederate General who once owned slaves and fought on the Confederate side in the US Civil War.
Local controversy exists over efforts by the Lake County Historical Society to move the now available historic, Civil War-era statue to their museum in Tavares, FL.
Efforts by two people apparently protesting the plans to move the Kirby Smith statue to the Tavares museum site were stymied when local police removed them from the facility.
Comas showed pictures of the statue creation process by showing slides of her creating a two-foot sculpture first of clay, then a four-foot version that will be used for creating a casting form for casting a bronze four-foot version of the statue.
Then she will take measurements from the four-foot model and transfer them to a full size, 8-foot model. Then that is used to measure and carve the solid block of Italian white marble used to create the final statue. The marble was sourced from the same Italian quarry and caves used by Michelangelo to get marble for his statues. She will use traditional sculpture methods developed by the Greeks when marble statues were frequently made for public spaces.
Comas was selected out of 1500 applicants due to her experience carving statues in marble and creating bronze versions. She travels between Florida and Italy.
In researching design for the Bethune statue, Comas obtained 284 vintage pictures of Bethune from the Architect of the US Capitol. She found that Bethune always wore her Doctoral cap and gown to events, so that is incorporated into the sculpture design. She also replicated the carved wooden cane used by Bethune. In addition, Bethune joined FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt at events. She once was in Europe and was presented with a bouquet of black roses. Subsequently, many people would give her black roses at other events. Thus black marble roses will be in her other hand.
As of February 2020, it will take another 6-12 months to carve the final marble statue.
Volusia County and Daytona Beach are the site of Bethune-Cookman University, named after Dr. Bethune. Many supporters of the Bethune statue are from that area. The Mayor of Daytona Beach, Derrick Henry, and the past President of the statue fundraising committee, Bob Lloyd, also talked and praised Lake County, the Historical Society and Curator Bob Grenier for taking on the challenge of providing a new home for the Kirby Smith statue. They said that until a reputable home was found for the Smith statue, the National Statuary Hall could not accept a replacement statue. So Lake County helped facilitate the placement of the Bethune statue at the National Statuary Hall.
The event clearly indicated that supporters of the Bethune statue really appreciated Lake County stepping up to take the Kirby Smith statue.
See some more pictures and a short video of the presentation at the link above.
Vance Jochim
FiscalRangers.com
YouTube: Fiscal Rangers Florida channel.
Vance Jochim
[email protected]
YouTube Channel "FiscalRangersFlorida"