ELBERTON JOING THE PROTEST

EGA joins protest against Chinese monument to Dr. King

By Gary Jones

 
 
 
An African-American artist from Atlanta said Monday that if a granite monument is built for the mall in Washington, D.C., to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., then workers, artisans and granite businesses from Georgia shouldn’t be excluded from participating in the creation of the memorial.

Artist Gilbert Young, with an endorsement from the Elberton Granite Association, said at a press conference Monday morning (MLK Day) that a process that allowed the selection of a Chinese stonecarver using Chinese granite to build the memorial to honor Dr. King is “culturally a smack in the face to American products, American history and American granite.”

Young, along with South Carolina sculptor Clint Button and Elberton granite stonecutter Dan Reed, said he has received the endorsement of the Barre (Vt.) Granite Association and Barre Master Sculptors and Carvers and now the Elberton Granite Association.

His organization, King Is Ours (www.kingisours.com), is currently staging a protest against the the MLK Memorial Project Foundation, the non-profit foundation that is working to raise funding for the memorial in Washington, D.C.

The MLK Memorial Project Foundation, says Young, is responsible for massive mismanagment of the project and he wants an investigation to find out what has happened to federal funds awarded to the organization.

Although Congress specifically stated in 1996 no federal monies would be utilized in the establishment of the memorial, in 2005 the Congress appropriated $10 million to aid the stalled project fundraisers. The foundation said the cost of the entire project will approach $100 million.

To Young’s dismay, in February of 2007, Chinese artist Lei Yixin was revealed as the project’s Artist of Record, and the memorial organization did it without even considering United States granite manufacturers, American artists or American laborers.

“Let me tell you about the dream I have,” said Young. “And that is allowing American artists to participate in Dr. King’s dream. We want to overthrow this decision and allow all American citizens with skills and resources to make a contribution to this memorial. Instead, they are allowing another culture in another country to do all the work on this project.

“The foundation failed to come (to Elberton) to look at granite from Dr. King’s home state, they failed to go to Barre, Vt., to consider the granite and the artists there,” said Young. “They should be using American stone, American artists and American ingenuity on this memorial. Instead, they are having this memorial made in a foreign country with the worst record of human rights in the history of mankind.”

Young says the notion that the foundation claims it couldn’t find American stonecutters is ridiculous.

 
 
“They want everyone to believe they couldn’t find an American artist and that they couldn’t find one quarry in the United States to get granite for this memorial,” he said.

Button, a sculptor whose family has been working in granite and stone for 117 years, said there has not been a fair and open bid process for the federal funding appropriated in 2005 and that the foundation never even visited Elbert County to find stone for the memorial.

“The King Foundation said working in granite is a ‘lost art,’ and that they couldn’t find artists and stonecutters to work on this project,” said Button. “We’re not lost. We are just being denied.”

Elberton stonecutter Dan Reed, who works with Eagle Granite, said he was ashamed of the “the fraud these people are pulling.”

“Dr. King is from Georgia,” said Reed. “And you’re going to tell me that they are going to overlook the Granite Capital of the World? I feel like this is a grave injustice to Elberton, Georgia, and to Dr. King.”

Young, Button and Reed toured Eagle Granite’s facilities at the conclusion of the press conference Monday, which was attended by Mayor Larry Guest, city council members, County Commission Chairman Tommy Lyon and members of the Elberton Granite Association.

Also in attendance was Elbert County NAACP President John Clark.

“I’m incensed and outraged,” said Clark. “They’ve allowed this work to be done by a government that allows to what amounts to slave labor work on this memorial.”

Young said that he wants the public to understand that although the federal government appropriated the funds for Dr. King’s memorial, no U.S. granite company, no U.S. granite manufacturer and no U.S. artist was allowed to bid on any phase of the project.

Vermont’s U.S. Congressional delegation has been asked to look into this matter and Young asked Elbert County’s local leaders to pass resolutions to draw attention to this situation.

 
 

Story created Jan 23, 2008 - 14:52:50 CST.













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Granite workers: 'King is ours'

By Dan McLean
Free Press Staff Writer

November 9, 2007
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BARRE -- Use of a Chinese sculptor and Chinese granite to create the centerpiece of a four-acre, $100 million Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington, D.C., has angered the U.S. granite industry.

Clint Button, a 40-year-old granite sculptor with deep family connections to Barre's granite industry, and Gilbert Young, a 66-year-old painter from Atlanta, have joined forces to try to reverse the outsourcing of the memorial. The pair hosted a news conference Thursday morning in downtown Barre in front of a monument recognizing the city's granite heritage.

American culture and American history was given away to a foreign sculptor to interpret, Young said, standing alongside Barre's mayor and local granite workers.

"I dream about the day when we overturn this decision," said Young, who established King Is Ours with his wife, Lea, earlier this year. The group is hoping to collect 1 million signatures through an online petition to support its cause.

President and CEO Harry Johnson of the Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation played down the flap and said at least half of the granite for the monument will be quarried and sculpted in the United States.

Button, who grew up in Chelsea and works as a granite sculptor in Spartanburg, S.C., teamed up with Young this summer after reading articles and seeing a YouTube clip about the Atlanta artist's efforts to stop the Chinese involvement. "And I said, 'This is absolutely wrong.'

"I stand today as a soldier fighting for this granite industry," Button said, noting his great-grandfather came to Barre in 1891 to work in the granite trade.

John Castaldo, executive director of the Barre Granite Association, said Barre has the talent to create the King memorial. "Barre, Vt. could very easily do this project -- and do it great justice," he said.

Representatives for the King Memorial Foundation visited Barre last year, including a stop at Rock of Ages Corp. a few miles away in Graniteville. "They know our capability from the World War II memorial," said Paul Hutchins, a vice president at Rock of Ages. "The industry here has a number of highly competitive and qualified sculptors that should have done the work. They never gave us the opportunity to make a proposal."

Granite from China is typically one-third to half the price of Vermont-quarried stone, Castaldo said.

Cost was not a factor, Johnson said. Lei Yixin of China was selected 18 months ago based on sculpting talent, he said.

The bulk of the King monument, however, will be crafted in the U.S, he said. "We are very proud to say that more than 51 percent will be domestic," Johnson said.

So far, The Chinese portion is limited to three, 30-foot sections: the "Stone of Hope" which features a likeness of King, and two sections called the "Mountain of Despair."

Those 30-foot sections constitute about 5 to 8 percent of the total project, Johnson said.

The small percentage doesn't matter to Young, particularly since the 30-foot sections are what he views as the centerpiece to the monument.

"I want all of it to be in America. I am greedy that way," he said, later adding, "What they have done is get caught with their pants down. This is going to blow up in their face."

The monument will include a 700-foot granite wall filled with King's quotations, Johnson said. Vermont granite may be selected for some of those portions.

"That's not off the list," Johnson said of using a Barre firm. "Maybe some lines got crossed somewhere."

Aside from Barre, granite could come from Stone Mountain, Ga., or Cold Springs, Calif., he said; no decisions have been made about those particular sections.

Johnson said the ethnicity of the sculptor should be irrelevant. "Some say, 'Why do you have a Chinese guy doing it?' We feel Dr. King's message was really universal," he said.

Lei will have a few American artists acting as "artistic consults," said Rica Orszag, King Memorial Foundation spokeswoman.

"Certainly, we were looking for someone of color to do this, an African-American," Johnson said of the 30-foot sections, adding no one could be found. "It's a lost art form, if you will."

A black American artist could have painted a picture of King which could then be sculpted by a U.S. firm, said Young, who is black.

Johnson said the backlash against the use of Chinese material and talent is to be expected. "Every memorial that has been built on the Mall has some sort of criticism. ... I don't think people are going to say, 'Who carved it?' I think people are going to say 'We're glad Dr. King is on the Mall."

Young disagrees. "I stand against the use of granite that is quarried using slave labor from a country with the worst human rights record in the world. African-Americans have a right to depict the life and legacy of one of our most beloved leaders as we saw him," Young's wrote on his Web site.

Vermont's congressional delegation has co-signed a letter to the King Memorial Foundation that encourages the use of U.S. granite, particularly from Vermont. "Barre granite has been used in some of the most significant monuments and memorials around the country, including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington," the late September letter said.

So far, $84 million has been raised for the project, including $10 million in federal tax dollars. The project, which will be located between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, is scheduled for completion in 2009, Orszag said.

Contact Dan McLean at 651-4877 or dmclean@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com

 

 

 

 

 

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King statue being made by Chinese

Some here would like to be creating memorial to civil rights leader

By Bartholomew Sullivan <!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once famously dreamed of one day hewing "out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope."

Luther Hampton, an artist and sculptor in Memphis, and hundreds of others around the country, want the stone of hope honoring King on the National Mall here to be hewn from American granite by an American sculptor -- "by someone who lived through the struggle."

Hampton, 65, used to craft small busts of King but says if he had been given the commission to depict King in stone he would have chiseled "something angelic, looking down on the war-torn world."

But that's not what the Martin Luther King Memorial Foundation has in mind. It has already commissioned a massive 30-foot-high statue of a standing King to be chiseled from Chinese beige granite by Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin.

The decision has spawned a protest movement made up of civil rights activists, artists, politicians and even the domestic granite industry.

Rica Orszag, a Los Angeles-based spokesman for the foundation, said she's aware of the controversy. She said domestic marble will be used on some aspects of the monument, but not on the statue of King. The plan remains to use Chinese marble for that, she said.

Foundation CEO Harry E. Johnson recently returned form Changsa, China, after visiting Lei and looking at a clay model of the statue and three additional, slightly different heads to choose from.

"It was breathtaking," he said. "I was impressed. Overwhelmed."

A member of the foundation's selection committee, David L. Hamilton, retired program manager for the National Capital Planning Commission, said earlier this year that there's always a controversy when plans are made to build in "America's backyard" -- the National Mall.

Hamilton noted that when Maya Lin, a Yale University architecture student from Ohio, was selected to do the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, detractors called her a "gook" and "the enemy."

Ground has been broken for the King memorial along the Tidal Basin between the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials, but building won't get under way until April because some underground wiring has to first be removed, Johnson explained.

The foundation's goal is to raise $100 million. It has raised $86 million, including millions in corporate sponsorships. FedEx has contributed $1 million. More than $9.8 million came from federal appropriations.

Of the controversy over the Chinese sculptor, Hamilton noted that King was an international figure and inspired millions around the world. And he said Lei Yixin is an exceptional artist.

But the decision has prompted an online protest movement, KingIsOurs.com, a petition drive, a California NAACP resolution and letters from members of Congress. Both Senators and the congressman from Vermont have asked the memorial foundation to consider "the world's finest granite" from the Green Mountain State.

King Is Ours founder Gilbert Young of Atlanta recently visited Vermont's leading granite quarries in Barre, Vt., and met with John Castaldo, director of the Barre Granite Association, a trade association for the granite industry.

Castaldo, whose association dates to 1889, said he and his 32 manufacturers are aligned with the King Is Ours movement and are "totally baffled" that their efforts to persuade the foundation to use domestic granite have been ignored. Barre has a colony of granite sculptors -- some of them second- and third-generation masters -- as well as a school for training more.

"To say there's nobody in the U.S. who could do this project -- there's something else going on here," Castaldo said. "The issue is, no granite in the U.S. is being considered and no sculptors from the U.S. are being considered."

Castaldo said the state legislature of Vermont is expected to follow the lead of Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who have urged the foundation to consider Vermont granite but didn't raise the issue of the sculptor, and enact a proclamation on the subject when it convenes in January. He said he wouldn't object to the monument using Georgia marble, but thinks it should come from an American source.

Not surprisingly, Thomas A. Robinson, executive vice president of the Elberton Marble Association in Elberton, Ga., agrees. He's been talking with state legislators about the decision, and letting them know that no one from the memorial foundation ever asked for a price quote from his members. King was from Georgia, Robinson points out.

"It seems crazy," said Robinson, whose association has 135 member companies in five counties of northeast Georgia, employing 1,200 people. "It should at least be domestic stone."

On the other side of the country, California's NAACP State Conference recently adopted a lengthy resolution demanding that the statue of King be taken from an American granite quarry and carved by an African-American sculptor.

It says, among several "whereas" clauses, that Lei Yixin is best known for sculpting the tyrant Mao Zedong and speculates that the granite will be quarried in conditions "akin to slave labor" in a country with a poor record on civil and human rights.

Washington correspondent Bartholomew Sullivan can be reached at (202) 408-2726.

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Article published Nov 6, 2007
Martin Luther King Jr. monument to be made in China, not Vermont

By DAVID DELCORE Times Argus Staff

BARRE — This city calls itself the "Granite Center of the World."

That apparently wasn't good enough for a proposed national memorial honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Not only will the granite for the monument in Washington, D.C., come from China, but so will the sculptor.

The outcry over the outsourcing of the memorial has been rising around the country and it will be heard in downtown Barre later this week.

Concerned that the massive stone centerpiece of the M.L.K. memorial is being made in China, representatives of the local granite industry want to make it crystal clear the monument could just as easily have been made in Vermont.

"We want to get the word out that we think a great resource was overlooked," says John Castaldo, executive director of the Barre Granite Association, which represents more than 30 granite firms and a number of related companies.

Castaldo, working in conjunction with local labor leaders, has invited the founder of a national protest against the outsourcing, called "King Is Ours," to attend a daylong event that will start with a press conference in Dente Park at 9 a.m. on Thursday.

Gilbert Young, an African-American artist and civil rights activist, launched the "King Is Ours" movement after learning earlier this year that Lei Yixin, a sculptor from the People's Republic of China, had been selected to carve the centerpiece of the memorial.

Young has denounced the decision that he argues will "… shackle the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the country with the worst human rights and civil rights record in the world."

Stone carver Clint Button, a Chelsea native who once worked in Barre and now owns a sculpture studio in South Carolina, has joined the cause and is expected to accompany Young to Barre this week.

Although Castaldo personally supports Young's national protest, he says the BGA's members are most interested in dispelling the idea that the self-proclaimed "Granite Center of the World" didn't have the stone or the sculptural expertise to tackle the mammoth project.

"That's like going to General Motors and saying: 'We don't think you can produce a car,'" he says.

Castaldo said representatives for the M.L.K. Memorial Project Foundation briefly visited with at least one local sculptor and toured Rock of Ages quarries and manufacturing plant more than a year ago. However, he says he doesn't believe Barre was ever seriously in the running for the prestigious project.

"I think that Barre was overlooked, and for what reason I'm not sure," he says.

According to Castaldo, even if the foundation wasn't interested in a memorial produced with Barre gray granite, that didn't mean the work couldn't have been done by any number of local artisans and granite manufacturers.

"We want to make them understand that the best quality and craftsmanship is right here in Barre," he says. "We've got great granite, we've got wonderful artisans and we've got an industry that's been here since the mid-1800s."

Castaldo says he remains mystified by the foundation's decision to recruit an overseas sculptor.

"I believe that if a statue is going to be carved of a man that represents freedom and human rights, then to me it should not be done in a country other than the United States of America," he said. "I really don't want to get political about this, but our country stands for freedom and civil rights and other countries do not."

Although Young and Button are committed to the "repatriation" of the memorial project, Castaldo says he wants to hear if that is even possible.

"Is it at a point where we can put the brakes on?" he asked. "That's what I would like to know."

State, local and federal officials are expected to attend Thursday morning's press conference, as are representatives of the two local labor unions that represent many of those employed in the granite industry as well as sculptors and manufacturers.

 

 

 

 

 

Times Argus

Article published Nov 8, 2007
Press conference on Martin Luther King Jr. memorial draws enthusiastic crowd
3:40 p.m.

By David Delcore
Times Argus Staff

BARRE – Organizers of a grassroots protest they hope will eventually result in the repatriation of a national monument honoring slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. met some enthusiastic supporters on the streets of downtown Barre today.

Stanislaw Lutostanki was one of them.

Lutostanski listened carefully to all the harsh rhetoric surrounding a controversial decision to recruit a Chinese sculptor to craft the massive stone centerpiece of the $100 million memorial that is planned for Washington D.C.

After hearing the decision denounced as “a travesty,” “a catastrophe,” “hideous” and “next to criminal,” Lutostanski, an immigrant stonecutter who has made his mark on Barre's granite industry over the past 25 years, didn't need to reach for a thesaurus to express his own opinion.

According to Lutostanski, the decision reached by the M.L.K. Memorial Project Foundation earlier this year could be summed up in just one word: “wrong.”

“I think national monument should be done in U.S.,” Lutostanski said matter-of-factly, his thick Polish accent on full display. “That should be rule.”

Lutostanski had plenty of company during a morning press conference that at times took on the tone of the sort of civil rights rallies for which King was once famous.

Held in Dente Park in the shadow of the towering granite statue depicting an immigrant Italian stonecutter, Gilbert Young, the African-American artist from Atlanta who founded the “King Is Ours” movement, delivered his own “I Have a Dream” speech, while Chelsea native Clint Button, who honed his sculpting skills in Barre before moving to South Carolina, urged onlookers to “join us in the fight.”

“As Americans we now have an opportunity to properly memorialize Dr. King in America, with American perspective in American granite,” Button said. “Together we can strike the mighty stone. Together we will do what Dr. King did.

“I stand proudly with Gilbert Young to show all the world that, together, a black man and a white man can make a difference in America,” he added. “Join us in the fight.”

Young suggested that fight, which started in February when the M.L.K. foundation announced Lei Yixin, a sculptor from the People's Republic of China, had been selected to carve the centerpiece of the King memorial, was starting to take its toll. He claimed the foundation's fundraising efforts have and will continue to be hampered by the King Is Ours movement.

“They're having problems,” he said. “Because of the cavalier attitude they had about this project they dug themselves into a hole I don't think they can get out of.”

To date the M.L.K. Foundation has reportedly raised just over $80 million – including a $10 million federal appropriation ­– but remains well shy of its $100 million goal for the four-acre memorial.

Young, a painter who joked he is more comfortable behind an easel than a microphone, suggested the King Is Ours movement was starting to gain traction as word spreads that work a national monument to an American icon has been “outsourced to China.”

“It may be your first time, but if it's up to me it will not be your last time that you will hear about this decision because I am committed that this will not happen on my watch,” he vowed.

Young said he had something, besides the color of his skin, in common with King.

“I have a dream also and I'm so proud to be here in Barre to express that dream to you. One of the things I dream about is overturning those decisions to take this monument out of this country and away from us,” he said decrying the notion that the monument planned for the national mall in Washington D.C. be carved from granite quarried by “slave labor” in China.

Rochester resident John Wong, a member of the Visual Artist Guild, joined Young and Button at the press conference. Wong said he was troubled by the foundation's selection of Yixin – an artist who is famous for producing more than a dozen statues of the “ruthless tyrant” Mao Tse-Tung.

“We must all stand up and defend the memory of Martin Luther King Jr.,” he said. “We should not tarnish the memory of Dr. King by forever linking him to a sculptor who miscasts a mass murderer as a hero.

“King's message of peace and justice will be tarnished by having an artist who has glorified the opposite,” he added. “We must all stand up and defend the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

In a written rebuttal to critics published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in August, Harry Johnson, CEO of the national memorial foundation, noted that the Chinese sculptor is actually part of a team, and oversight and construction is being handled by an American firm. He insisted that Lei Yixin was chosen after an international search “…for an expert sculptor who had the proven experience to carve large-scale projects in granite.”

That search didn’t linger long in Barre, according to granite industry insiders, who say only sculptor in the self-proclaimed “Granite Center of the World” was consulted during a brief visit that included a stop at Rock of Ages’ manufacturing plant.