More than four years after removing a statue of controversial explorer Christopher Columbus from upper Laura Bradley Park, the Peoria Park District has commissioned an artist to create a replacement.
In a nearly unanimous vote this month, the park district board approved a $25,000 advance to artist Preston Jackson.
Jackson, known primarily for his bronze sculptures and prolific public art, is in the early stages of designing a tableau of what Native American life looked like in Central Illinois.
“That’s the most important thing about this is that, not only what I am portraying, but how I portray them,” he said.
In the back of Jackson’s Peoria studio, a few large clay tablets bear the very early sketches of a Native American woman holding a swaddled baby. Jackson isn’t a stranger to Native American-inspired design. He created two large bronze doors and a facade that welcomes visitors to the Cahokia Mounds Museum in Collinsville, Illinois.
“I have to definitely do this right,” he said. “And I have to do the research, do the homework. The best thing I can do is speak to someone who is Native American.”
Jackson says, in preparation, he’s been doing extensive reading on the history of Native Americans in Central Illinois. He’s scheduled meetings with local advocates and tribal leadership.
There is some amount of friction, he admits, to not having clear Native American heritage himself when working on a piece like this one.
Broadly though, difficult histories are not a new topic for Jackson’s work. Some of his most famous pieces are busts of Civil Rights movement leaders. He crafted dual sculptures commemorating the 1908 Springfield Race Riot.
“When I do a project about African Americans, I feel that I should be the one to do it. For many reasons, because we don’t realize the psychological damage that has been done,” Jackson said. “So it’s the same way with this project.”
Jackson says it’s part of who he is as an artist that his pieces invoke larger, and sometimes difficult, conversations about history, the country and the figures portrayed.
“It is important, because we as voters, members of this country or whatever, wherever the lines are drawn, we have that responsibility,” he said. “Because what we do is we bring unanswered questions. We bring the answers with us. Just by being, just who we are.”
As an artist who produces a lot of public art. Jackson’s pieces are viewed by people of all different political backgrounds and personal histories. When asked if he balances the “public” aspect of a project like this one with the artists’ desire to touch on potentially thorny topics, Jackson says, it’s all part of the process.
“You know, I wasn’t an A student, not by any means, but I knew the truth. I can feel when things are right and when things are wrong. But that takes me to this place of soaking up information, I have to decipher, or I have to scan, or judge, or be very cautious of what I accept,” he said. “And in accepting certain things, I also have to be very aware of how I dispense with information.”
After all, he says, there’s power in art-making.
Visits to the spot where Columbus once stood in Bradley Park have an important spot on Jackson’s agenda. While there, he says he doesn’t just think about the land before any of us were here, or how his piece will interact with the scenery surrounding it. He also thinks about the Columbus statue and the artist who made it.
“And there’s a little bit of me that says, ‘what about the artist?’ You know? The artists that probably studied somewhere in Europe, as I look at the techniques that were used. A very good artist,” said Jackson. “How would he or she feel about knowing that there’s controversy over what their hands, what their mind and hands produced?”
Jackson says all of this taken together, the history, the good and bad, the artist, the controversy, the community, it all informs the content and concept of the work.
It’s a difficult and complicated process, but above all Jackson says he feels honored, both to be selected as the artist for this project and to have the opportunity to give the community a bronze cast that’s long-lasting and timeless.