[accessibleimage] FW: Artist faces the music: Original plaster casts of blues greats toadorn Delta State

 

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Subject: Artist faces the music: Original plaster casts of blues greats
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Jackson Clarion-Ledger, MS, USA
Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Artist faces the music: Original plaster casts of blues greats to adorn
Delta State

By Sherry Lucas

Caption: Artist Sharon McConnell's historical "Blues Great" project
makes life casts of blues musicians, including Bobby Rush. File
photo/The Clarion-Ledger
  
The first time I met Sharon McConnell was at the Old Capitol Inn in
Jackson more than four years ago, where she held the faces of the blues
in her hands, and made them her own.

McConnell is a sculptor. And she's blind. With slim, soft fingers, she
made molds of faces we know from the blues stage - Bobby Rush and Vasti
Jackson, while I sat watching.

Since then, she's molded many more, including musical powerhouses who've
passed on - Othar Turner, Jesse Mae Hemphill, R.L. Burnside, Sam Myers,
Little Milton and more.

Those faces have a new home now, as does McConnell.

Her 55 original plaster casts are now on permanent loan to Delta State
University - a Valentine's Day gift, appropriate since "this project was
about love and appreciation," she said. Also, "I couldn't let them get
too far away."

McConnell, previously a Santa Fe, N.M., resident, now calls Como home.

She thought back to the early days of her project, when "Mississippi
seemed so mysterious and otherworldly," she said. "I never knew that
this journey, all the people I would meet, the musicians, the friends,
would lead me to my new home.

"It's about heart and it's about art," she said. "It always is, isn't
it?"

SERENDIPITOUS

The Mississippi Delta won her over, much as its music had. "As the
result of traveling here, I'm just so impressed with the people I've
met, their authenticity and their raw talent and really helping each
other."

As her blindness (from a degenerative eye disease) progressed and needs
changed, she wanted the support of a smaller community. Her guide dog,
Bella, at 10 entering semi-retirement, needed a slower pace.

Plus, musician/producer Jimbo Mathus reopened his Delta Recording
Service there about the same time she moved. It's a magnet for the
musicians she continues to document.

"I think we're all catalysts for each other's art," she said. They're
community, too - wrapped up with the covered dishes from friends and
neighbors and the church right across the street from home.

WALKING TRAIL

At Delta State University, the plaster casts are prepared for display,
university archivist Emily Weaver said. Grant-writing for support for
cases and educational tools is the next step.

"We do have big plans to create a blues walking trail downtown and it's
our goal to put the bronze masks out there," Weaver said. "But just
having these faces ... I think that's going to offer us a new way to
teach the blues and the Delta.

"It's a new format. You can listen to the music, see pictures and
objects but when you actually see the bluesmen's and blueswomen's faces,
it's something magical," Weaver said.

McConnell's hope is that people will be able to touch the faces of the
blues. When they're cast in bronze, that can happen, it's an expensive
prospect that'll require more funding.

McConnell's the first to admit her wish list is a long one - that a
series of bronze portraits will be in the coming Smithsonian National
Museum of African American History and Culture, and perhaps even another
edition at Jackson's convention center.

Now Delta State is an ongoing home for the plaster casts, with more as
they are molded.

"I never really felt like I owned them. They're actual people. Images of
actual people," McConnell said. "It really isn't my artwork. It's God's
artwork. They needed to come home to Mississippi ... be properly
archived and protected, so people could see them and never forget where
American music history began."

Contact staff writer Sherry Lucas at (601) 961-7283 or e-mail
slucas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 


http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070306/COL0203
/703060342/0/SPECIAL08

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