A project to build a Tennessee Williams statue outside of the famous playwright’s historic home is now slated to begin in 2024.
Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau CEO Nancy Carpenter told The Dispatch the Columbus Cultural Heritage Foundation will partner with her to oversee the project using a $75,000 donation from Columbus resident Dixie Butler.
“It got started when Dixie Butler and I started talking (in 2021) about the need for more recognition and more promotion for the Tennessee Williams Home and Welcome Center,” said Carpenter, who assists the nonprofit CCHF at the direction of the CVB board.
The project will include construction of a bench and bronze sculpture of Williams sitting outside the Tennessee Williams Home and Welcome Center on Main Street. The famous playwright was born in the house, though it was originally located one block south of its current location.
Carpenter said the project was supposed to begin in 2022 but the artist, Bill Beckwith, hit delays in completing construction of his studio near Oxford. A Bitter Southerner article has described Beckwith as the “Rodin of the Delta.”
Carpenter and CCHF have also commissioned a local artist, Micahel Buxton, to construct the bench. She expects to have that done before 2024 and the bench delivered to Beckwith by spring.
“We’ve already discussed and planned what Tennessee Williams will look like,” Carpenter said. “We went through probably 200 sketches for this.”
Carpenter said the money was given to CCHF since it oversees the welcome center and its maintenance, and none of the donation has been spent.
Concerns about the project and the donation were made earlier this week in comments on the Facebook page, Columbus (What’s Going On) by a private citizen.
Butler said she decided to donate the money because of her love for Columbus and hopes the statue will attract visitors to the city.
“Years ago, I was on the CVB board, and we used to talk about how neat it would be to have a statue of Tennessee Williams sitting on a bench, but we couldn’t do it then,” Butler said. “Columbus has been really good to me, and it turns out that I was in a position to pay for it.
That’s what I wanted to do because it will bring visitors to our town.”
Delays in getting started
Beckwith on Friday told The Dispatch he had planned to start the project much earlier, but he is now 95% complete with the studio space, which he needs to cast and assemble the statue.
“Any delays in this thing have been my fault,” Beckwith said. “My whole studio beside Taylor Grocery is very small. So, we needed to go bigger, and (I) now have a much bigger space at 15,000 square feet. I’m ready to go.”
Beckwith has previously sculpted busts of Tennessee Williams for a client in West Point and created a bronze statue of William Faulkner sitting in Oxford.
With the studio nearly done, Beckwith said he can start modeling work for the statue and receive the bench. Once the bench gets to the studio, he will cast it into a mold and send it to a foundry for bronze casting, which could take up to six months.
Beckwith said he will then put on finishing touches to the piece and bring it to Columbus.
“Tennessee Williams is one of my very favorite authors,” he said. “… Nancy wanted a whole figure, which really excited me. She’s been extremely patient, but getting a contractor (out here) was almost impossible.”
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