Black-themed sculpture to be installed at Ashland Creek Park to memorialize names from T-shirt memorial

By Holly Dillemuth, Ashland.news

The artist behind a Black art installation planned for Ashland Creek Park hopes the piece will, once erected, serve as a cultural anchor of belonging for the Black community in Ashland and the surrounding Rogue Valley, while welcoming those from all races and ethnic backgrounds.

Local artist and installation designer Micah BlackLight, who will sculpt “Ancestors Future: Crystallizing our Call,” joined in a community conversation on Monday about “What it means to belong” with Cassie Preskenis, who interviewed multiple people of color for “Say Their Names,” a video about the T-shirt memorial in Ashland’s Railroad Park commemorating the deaths of multiple Black individuals from all walks of life, and Taylor Stewart, executive director of the Oregon Remembrance Project. All were gathered at Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Carpenter Hall.

The Oregon Remembrance Project is supporting the efforts of The Ashland Sunrise Project, an initiative of Ashland Together, a group of eight local women. The Sunrise Project started in Ashland earlier this year and aims to turn what once was a sundown town into a sunrise city. 

“I help communities with truth and reconciliation projects around repairing historical injustice and I’ve been helping communities with the Sunrise Project to reconcile community’s history of being a sundown town,” Stewart said.

Stewart noted on Monday he was currently on a five-day tour of Southern Oregon, where he’s been participating in a documentary on The Oregon Remembrance Project with Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB).

Attendees of the community conversation watched a video called “Say Their Names” with interviews of Black individuals from all throughout the area, conducted and edited by Preskenis, all of whom spoke about the impact of creating the T-shirt memorial as well as the impact of subsequent vandalism.

Ashland Together member and City Councilor Gina DuQuenne is among the individuals interviewed for the video.

“If anybody were to go by and read the names (on the T-shirts) and to see how many different names, and the length of the lives of the people who were killed, they weren’t older people, these were young people,” DuQuenne said. “They were people whose lives hadn’t even started yet.”

Aidan Ellison, who was shot and killed by a white man in 2019 outside an Ashland hotel, is also listed along the fence at Ashland’s Railroad Park.

“When people ask me and they have, ‘so, why do you keep putting those T-shirts back up?’” DuQuenne said. “They’re more than T-shirts. It’s more than just a fence.”

BlackLight’s sculpture aims to create a permanent representation of the T-shirt memorial, which has been vandalized at least three times, at Ashland Creek Park. 

“I think of Micah’s piece as something that can fill that role of cultural anchor, something that can allow African-Americans in — not just Ashland, but the surrounding area — to feel like they’re tethered in some way to the geographic landscape of the community,” Stewart said.

“Art is so often the thing that can fill that void and create that feeling,” he added.

The sculpture will portray a Black man wearing “futuristic” sunglasses, shielded by Black wings that will represent “protection from classism, racism, and violence,” BlackLight said. The man is holding a book containing the names of all the individuals named in the T-shirt memorial at Railroad Park.

The sculpture, estimated to cost $160,000, is expected be nearly all funded through private donations by the time it’s completed. So far, BlackLight said donations ranging from $5 to $5,000 have come in from local individuals. The Ashland Parks Foundation has also contributed funds to the project.

“I’m more than happy to start partnering with larger organizations because I want to get this done,” BlackLight told Ashland.news in a phone interview Wednesday, “but it began on the ground, it began on these streets.”

Seeing the donations that have come in so far represents “community buy-in” for BlackLight.

“It shows that there’s a whole bunch of people who care,” BlackLight said. “It shows that there’s a whole bunch of people, although they may not have a ton of monetary means, they have the desire to express their support.”

BlackLight will create a 3-D printed model of the sculpture first, which is in the preliminary stages.

“It’s going to be created out of steel and bronze, but mostly steel,” he said, noting that the steel has been donated.

His tentative goal is to complete the sculpture in 2027.

Creating welcoming spaces for all

Stewart posed the question: What can the community create in its physical spaces that can function as those “tetherings” to help create more welcoming spaces?

Stewart, who is Black and lives in Portland, described to attendees that, for instance, often the music he hears in public spaces there have more alternative rock bands than genres that might show up at the top of his playlist. During time spent in Atlanta, however, he noticed the rap music he loves playing more often. It’s those kinds of details that can lead to an increased sense of belonging in a place.

He encourages improving white spaces to increase a sense of belonging for non-white people. One example would be to improve the barber shop experience by encouraging white barbers to incorporate more diverse music and art, and ways of styling hair, especially for Black individuals, at their shops.

“While that fills the cup of belonging (only) so much, it doesn’t quite replace the original; the truly authentically Black thing, the Black barber shop, and so, yes, we want to make improvements in white spaces, but we also want to create more opportunities for the creation of Black space, which …  can function as a cultural anchor; something that tethers you to the community,” he said. 

Tara Houston, who facilitated the community conversation, posed the concept of creating a fourth space in Ashland as a way to create more belonging. While most individuals have a home, work and friends space, she posed the question:  What could serve as a fourth space for all? 

Could Ashland have a new holiday?

Stewart encouraged the concept of coming together as a community and creating a new holiday that is uniquely Ashland. The concept is still in preliminary stages.

Stewart has been working with Grants Pass for the past three years to “reconcile the community’s history of being a sundown town,” which limited where Black or other racial minorities could live, and, when passing through, might be told through a “culture of fear, violence, and intimidation” they should “be out of town by sundown.”

With Grants Pass as the first official city in Oregon and in the nation to pursue a designation as a “Sunrise” community, Ashland is on a path to become the second.

During his time spent in Grants Pass, Stewart discovered a holiday unique to Grants Pass:  Boatnik. He believes creating something that is just as unique to Ashland could help tether more people to the community.

An audience member posed the idea of holding a multicultural week with diverse cuisine and dance.

Stewart lauded the idea, and said even starting with a personal choice like having diverse cuisines from all over the world on July 4 can be a place to start. 

“We have such a magnet here for diversity,” Preskenis said, of Ashland.

She noted that a number of diverse individuals come here to work at Oregon Shakespeare Festival to work and act, but not all stay.

“If I could bring one topic to tonight about belonging, it’s about us as a community having the conversation about … what is the anchor or anchors that we’re missing that creates safety and a sense of belonging so that our demographic changes,” Preskenis said.

Ashland Together plans to promote Ashland’s participation in Ashland Sunrise Project

Allyson Phelps, of Ashland Together, spoke with Ashland.news earlier this year about the group’s initiative, “Ashland Sunrise Project,” which is under the leadership and coordination of the Oregon Remembrance Project. The idea is to create more welcoming spaces in a community together in places that were once known as “sundown” towns.

“It’s a process of educating ourselves, talking to each other,” Phelps said in February. 

“So once the intention is there, hopefully the rest will follow and there will be concrete things to show,” Phelps said. “We’re pursuing to get (the historical marker) installed. That’s very tangible … where people of color are recognized and heard.”

Phelps said tentatively that the goal is to install a historical marker at a later date down the road and at a location in Ashland to be determined, which likely could be a gathering place for events such as Juneteenth.

“Grants Pass has been a blueprint for us,” Phelps said.

For Coos Bay, it took about six years to install an historical marker for the only reported lynching of a Black man in Oregon, though the city is not officially a Sunrise Project city.

“It’s not a competition, but we’re happy to be a part of this, we’re very grateful for communities like Coos Bay and Grants Pass to give us the inspiration that it can be done,” Phelps said.

Reach Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth at hollyd@ashland.news.

Related stories:

Juneteenth and fathers celebrated, fundraiser launched Sunday (June 19, 2023)

Volunteers work together to replace Say Their Names T-shirts (April 3, 2023)

‘Say Their Names’ T-shirt memorial vandalized again, community responds (March 31, 2023)

Say Their Names memorial restored by community within hours of vandalism (Jan. 25, 2023)

Say Their Names memorial along fence at Railroad Park vandalized (Jan. 25, 2023)

A hundred people gather to mark second anniversary of Black teen’s killing (Nov. 24, 2022)

Ashland panel discussion focuses on impact of racism in Southern Oregon (Aug. 24, 2022)