62 feet of resilience - Ja’s tallest sculpted monument rises from Melissa, reaching back to 1962

WESTERN BUREAU:

Businessman Christopher Issa has commissioned what will become one of Jamaica’s tallest sculpted monument – a massive 62-foot work by renowned Jamaican sculptor Scheed Cole that is as much about the devastation of Hurricane Melissa as it is about the country’s capacity to rise again.

The height is no accident. Issa deliberately settled on 62 feet as a nod to 1962, the year Jamaica gained Independence, creating a link between the monument and an artistic vision conceived at the birth of the nation but never fully realised.

The still-unnamed monument, being erected at St James Place on Jimmy Cliff Boulevard, is a gift to Jamaica from Issa and S Hotels and is expected to become a striking new landmark along Montego Bay’s tourism corridor, minutes from Sangster International Airport.

But, look closely and its imposing size becomes almost secondary. Embedded in its towering structure are stories of Jamaicans rescuing one another, rebuilding, planting, praying, making music and, ultimately, surviving.

For Cole, it is deeply personal.

“I couldn’t move forward in any other artwork I was doing,” he told The Sunday Gleaner, recalling the anguish he felt after seeing the destruction caused by Melissa.

“I needed to do something to inspire my country, bring back hope, and to celebrate those that are constantly helping.”

Although Cole was spared the worst of the hurricane’s fury, seeing what happened elsewhere left him shaken.

“Pain alone filled my heart,” he said. “I didn’t know we could even recover after such a devastating hurricane.”

That pain begins at the base of the monument. Water, rocks and vegetation evoke both Jamaica’s natural landscape and the flooding unleashed by Melissa.

Cole has gone further, incorporating into the work pieces of discarded material collected from hurricane-affected communities. Some were handed to him by people who told him their own stories of what happened during the storm.

Then come the human beings. In one of the monument’s most poignant scenes, an elderly woman caught in the devastation passes a baby upwards to a younger woman. The older woman, Cole explained, has accepted that she may not survive. Her concern is that the child does.

The younger woman reaches down to receive the baby and, symbolically, the future.

Elsewhere, a soldier desperately stretches towards a woman who appears ready to surrender. Their fingers barely touch.

“She’s saying, ‘I can’t hold on any longer. I’m going to give up,’” Cole explained.

The soldier’s expression tells her otherwise.

“Don’t let go. Give me a hand. I’ll hold you. I’ll save you.”

Journey out of despair

From there, the monument begins its journey out of despair. As the figures rise, the expressions change. Hope returns.

So do music, religion, agriculture, construction, athletics and the culinary traditions that help define Jamaica. A Rastafarian musician with a guitar represents the country’s music; other figures speak to farming and rebuilding. They do not stand separately. They connect.

Their joined forms create an arch, reinforcing the central message Cole wants Jamaicans to take from the work: survival cannot be an individual pursuit.

“We cannot recover by ourselves,” he said. “We need each other to recover.”

Above them will rise a giant Tree of Life.

Fourteen different healing plants are incorporated into the tree, representing Jamaica’s 14 parishes, while living ferns and other plants will be allowed to grow along carefully selected areas of the monument.

Water will cascade through sections of the structure, evoking Jamaica’s identity as the ‘Land of Wood and Water’, while creating what Cole hopes will become a cool, contemplative space beneath the towering artwork. For him, the tree could only emerge from one foundation: togetherness.

“If we do not come together and cross the divide, the tree of life will not spring,” he said.

The monument is also an extraordinary engineering undertaking. More than 35 workers, including highly experienced welders, have been involved, with structural engineering, ground testing and approvals forming part of the process.

Cole said particular attention has been paid to ensuring the monument can withstand severe winds, a consideration carrying even greater significance for an artwork born out of a hurricane.

Parts of its industrial framework will deliberately remain exposed. Rather than conceal the steel, Cole wants it seen as part of the story, the skeleton of reconstruction and evidence of the strength required to rebuild.

The decision to make the monument 62 feet tall reaches back more than six decades.

Shortly after Jamaica gained Independence in 1962, noted engineer, architect and art patron A.D. Scott challenged celebrated Jamaican sculptor Alvin Marriott to create a monumental work symbolising the new nation’s arrival, Issa told The Sunday Gleaner.

300 interlocking figures

Marriott conceived a massive cone-shaped structure comprising some 300 interlocking figures men, women and children – representing ordinary Jamaicans alongside recognisable leaders.

“The figures at its base represented people not yet fully conscious of their power and responsibilities. As they climbed, they became increasingly awakened, with those near the top stretching their arms outward as if reaching towards the limits of possibility,” added the businessman, who has earned the moniker ‘Jamaica’s Cultural Ambassador’.

Research by The Sunday Gleaner reveals that at the summit of that statue stood a nude man and woman, representing the dignity of the young nation and its hope for progress and unity.

The proposed national monument became the subject of fierce public debate and was never completed in its intended form. Contemporary criticism included objections that the mass of intertwined bodies resembled dead bodies piled upon one another. Only the couple intended for its summit was completed.

The eight-foot-high base remains at the Harbour View roundabout, while the grander vision of hundreds of Jamaicans rising together was left unfinished.

Yet, more than six decades later, there is an uncanny echo in Cole’s work, and Issa’s vision.

It is not a recreation of Marriott’s monument, nor does Cole present it as one.

But, where Marriott imagined Jamaicans interlocking and rising towards national awakening, Issa is showcasing Jamaicans holding, rescuing and supporting one another as they rise from disaster.

One was conceived at the birth of an independent nation. The other was born from its devastation and survival.

Issa’s earliest thoughts for the project centred on ‘One Destiny’, drawing on Marcus Garvey’s message of a shared human destiny and on the extraordinary assistance Jamaica received from overseas after Melissa.

The concept continued evolving in Cole’s hands.

At one stage, Cole called it Jamaica Rising. Other names, including Tallawah and Nuff Respect, have been considered.

None has yet captured the monument sufficiently for its creators to settle on a final name.

Perhaps that is fitting for a work that has continued to change as it has grown.

Look beyond the figures

What has not changed is its message. Cole wants Jamaicans to look beyond the figures, the waterfalls, the plants, the steel and even the extraordinary height, and see themselves.

He describes the monument as a “social sculpture” – one in which Jamaicans must recognise their own place in the national story.

For the sculptor, completing a work of such scale also carries a responsibility to demonstrate what Jamaican artists and craftsmen are capable of creating.

“We oftentimes view ourselves as being inadequate and incapable,” he said.

He sees his role differently.

“As a servant, that’s what I see myself. I have my role to play to ensure that Jamaica is great in how art is viewed in this country.”

But perhaps the simplest explanation for the 62-foot monument comes from the lesson Cole says Melissa left behind.

“We are surrounded by selfishness. Nobody want to help nobody. Everybody feel like it’s gonna rise higher than me if I give you a helping hand.”

This monument argues the opposite.

“In order for all of us to rise,” Cole said, “we all have to rise together, or it’s not going to rise at all.”

This is Issa’s second monumental gift to the country, a year after erecting the 46-foot-tall streamer tail hummingbird at the S Hotel in Montego Bay. The bird currently stands as the tallest sculpture in Jamaica, and second tallest in the Caribbean.

janet.silvera@gleanerjm.com