The years-long effort to place a Martin Luther King Jr. statue on the grounds of Georgia’s statehouse is on hold after the death of the sculptor tapped to design the project. Now state leaders are struggling to find a way forward while grieving the loss of artist Andy Davis.
Davis was commissioned last month to design and create the statue of the civil rights icon, and he met with emissaries from the King Center just days before he died late Sunday of injuries after his motorcycle was hit from behind by a pickup truck. Two state lawmakers deeply involved in the effort said the death forces the effort to begin anew.
“We have to go back to the drawing board,” said state Rep. Calvin Smyre, who helped coordinate the project and last met with Davis on Thursday. “I spent four hours with him last week at the King Center. We were cutting him a check this week for materials.”
Now, Smyre added, “I’m praying for Andy’s family.”
The project, which comes after years of lobbying from black leaders to put King's visage on the statehouse grounds, was unveiled by Gov. Nathan Deal last year and repeated in his inaugural speech in January. It was set to be completed in time for King's memorial holiday in January, though the timeline now will inevitably be pushed back.
Davis was hit about 12:35 a.m. Saturday at a traffic light on Jodeco Road in Henry County, the Georgia State Patrol said. On Monday, Corey Ashton Sease, 20, was charged with vehicular homicide in Davis’ death. Sease, who was driving a Toyota pickup at the time of the accident, had previously been charged with driving under the influence, following too closely and possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, authorities said.
An artist and dreamer
Davis was driven by forces not everyone understood. He recalled a childhood in Florida and Georgia where he was the class outcast. He found a release with a blank page and a pencil. One doodle — a portrait of John F. Kennedy — so impressed an art teacher that she urged him to continue.
“Art,” he would say in a 2014 interview, “saved my life.”
As an adult, he dealt diamonds, traded Rolls-Royce cars, repaired mufflers, fixed beat-up copy machines and melted tar for a roofing company. That all changed one morning, when at the age of 34 he woke up with a new mission in mind. He told his wife, Gerri, he wanted to be an artist.
"Hell! What if the Wright brothers hadn't followed their dreams?" he would ask.
He took up shop in a rehabbed cotton gin south of downtown McDonough with gargoyles on the roof and tiki torches on the walls. It was where he designed his signature work, a life-size bronze statue of Ray Charles that stands in a plaza in Albany, the performer’s birthplace.
He more recently completed a statue of Patrick Henry, famed for his “liberty or death” speech, in McDonough. Davis relished the chance to smile at it during his drive home from his studio each afternoon.
McDonough Mayor Billy Copeland, who often visited Davis’ studio, called him the “most talented individual I have ever known.” And City Councilwoman Sandra Vincent posted on Twitter that “being around Andy in moments of creativity was like seeing the hands of God at work.”
A ‘jovial burden’
The King statue was to be the sculptor’s crowning achievement, one that Davis called his “jovial burden.”
"To be able to have the nod from the King family and the governor and the state to choose me to do this is quite an honor that I'm going to put my life into — to make sure that everybody's proud," he said in an interview that aired last week on Atlanta public radio station WABE.
As momentous as the project was — the chance to design the iconic statue of King outside the Capitol in the civil rights leader’s hometown — Davis didn’t let it get to his head. When Deal’s office asked Davis for a head shot, he sent over his baby picture. A confused staffer called the artist to ask why he wanted to be represented as a cooing kid. Davis’ answer: because people take themselves too seriously.
The past few weeks brought a hive of activity to lay the groundwork for the statue. Sketches of an early draft of the project were already getting rave reviews, said state Rep. Joe Wilkinson, a Sandy Springs Republican. And an unnamed “anchor” sponsor for the project was locked down, he said. That sponsor remains committed to the project, he added.
“He had just a remarkable design. Everyone was just very excited,” Wilkinson said. “Andy was willing to do it for cost, as a labor of love.”
Despite the strong positive reception of Davis’ draft, producing a statue of King is not as easy as simply hiring a new sculptor to follow Davis’ designs. First, the sketches were just preliminary. Second, there’s a dearth of Georgia-based sculptors who can take on this type of project, and many who are capable already have lengthy waiting lists. Still, Smyre said the drawings make for a good starting point.
“If possible, we would prefer to use what has been approved with input from the King estate,” Smyre said. “Otherwise, we would have to start the process completely over.”
Davis’ friends, including Copeland, the McDonough mayor, say they are committed to preserving his artistic legacy. His family said in a statement that he would donate his organs to someone in need.
“His final sculpture is one we would never have imagined — that will be living, breathing and seeing in someone’s body,” it said.
And his wife, whom he first met when she was a sophomore in high school and he a junior, said she is eternally happy he was able to follow his muse.
“I think it’s so neat,” she said in that 2014 interview, “that when he leaves this world, he will have left so much.”
Read our Personal Journey on Andy Davis: The cloud maker
About the Author
