http://blogs.windsorstar.com/news/ar...july-sculpture
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Brian Cross
Jul 02, 2015 - 4:50 PM EDT
Last Updated: Jul 02, 2015 - 6:17 PM EDT
Standing on the Windsor riverfront and looking north to Detroit, sculptor Tim Schmalz thinks this may be the perfect spot for his tribute to Gordon Lightfoot’s once banned song about the 1967 race riot, Black Day in July.
“Here we are in Windsor looking at the city and I think that’s the perspective a Canadian can have,” Schmalz said this week, after spending several days in Detroit for the dedication of the latest bronze cast of his much-discussed work, Homeless Jesus, at a downtown Detroit’s Saints Peter and Paul Jesuit Catholic Church.
While here, he was talking to Detroit historical experts about his yet-to-be-started Black Day in July work. It will be part of an ambitious project — fully funded by an anonymous patron who’s a huge Lightfoot fan — to sculpt a large main piece featuring Lightfoot playing guitar, plus many more smaller sculptures each honouring one of his songs. Those sculptures are all bound for a park and trail in Lightfoot’s hometown of Orillia, Ont., but Schmalz plans to produce second castings and place them in locations that are connected to each song.
Whitefish Bay, on the eastern end of the southern shore of Lake Superior, is the proposed location for his Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald sculpture. The former rail yards around the CN Tower is where he’s hoping to locate his Canadian Railroad Trilogy sculpture. Perhaps sculptures for songs with no mentioned location will be erected near Lightfoot’s old playing haunts such as Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern and Massey Hall.
“I’m hoping this Lightfoot trails through a lot of Canada and the U.S. and I think that’s one of the greatest compliments we can give to one of our greatest cultural heroes and that’s Gordon Lightfoot,” said Schmalz, a Canadian who primarily does large-scale religious monuments as well as monuments honouring veterans and firefighters. By casting Lightfoot’s songs into bronze, it will be impossible to turn off the volume on Lightfoot for the next 100 years, he said.
The main Lightfoot sculpture is supposed to be dedicated in Orillia this fall. Schmalz wants to complete the Black Day in July sculpture some time after, hopefully before the 50th anniversary of the riots in 2017.
Simmering racial tensions in Detroit exploded in the early morning hours of July 23, 1967, when the predominantly white police force launched a raid on an unlicensed drinking club — a blind pig — on 12th Street. Police officers attempted to arrest the large crowd in the club, and while they waited for transportation, onlookers gathered outside and bottles were thrown. The situation escalated to one of the worst riots in U.S. history, with the National Guard and soldiers called in. By the time it ended five days later there were 43 dead, 7,231 arrested, 1,189 injured and more than 2,500 stores either looted or burned.
The outflow of white residents and businesses from Detroit escalated dramatically following the riot, leading to the city’s economic demise.
When Lightfoot recorded Black Day in July, radio stations in 30 states banned the song which contained such lyrics as “the body of a dead youth lies stretched upon the ground, upon the filthy pavement, no reason can be found.”
Lightfoot, said Schmalz, had the courage to sing about the riot when nobody wanted to even talk about it. When the sculptor was in Detroit to discuss how to turn the once controversial song into a sculpture, Detroit Historical Society director Robert Bury encouraged him to not simply focus on the death, violence, burning and looting. The historical society and its museums are planning an array of projects to mark the 50th anniversary of the riot.
“They should be about the future and hope and opportunity,” Bury said.
Schmalz was convinced and decided to focus on the hopeful passage in the song that implores listeners: “Why can’t we all be brothers why can’t we live in peace.” He’s still working on what it will finally look like.
The sculpture could go in front of the Detroit Historical Museum, on the Detroit riverfront, on Belle Isle, the site of the blind pig where the riot started, or in Windsor, Bury said.
The idea that the best place to commemorate a song by a Canadian about the Detroit riot could be on the Windsor riverfront is an interesting concept, said Cathy Masterson, the city’s manager of cultural affairs.
The City of Windsor would absolutely be open to discussing locating the sculpture along the riverfront, she said. Someone who wishes to donate art must fill out a public art application form (available on the city’s website), which goes to the community public art committee and then council for approval. In the last three years, four sculptures or monuments have been approved this way.
Schmalz is looking for input on where the sculpture should be located. You can email him at
tim@timschmalz.com.
While he hasn’t decided whether the sculpture will go in Windsor or Detroit, locating it on the Windsor riverfront provides such a clear vision of America, “and that’s what the song does,” he said. “To have that sculpture silhouetted by the actual subject matter would be very important and very cool.”
bcross@windsorstar.com
Black Day in July sculpture
